28. Demons on Chains

Demons on Chains

Details that had once been too small or too fast to notice now stood out sharply.

Even with undead and monsters, I could perceive the tiny expressions and muscle tensions that appeared in the instant before they aimed or fired.

Because the whole body possessed more inertia than a single limb or finger, those subtle changes were easier to catch.

Even monsters had to look at a target before moving or aiming—at least, monsters without extrasensory abilities did.

And now I could notice the minute adjustments of their heads and eyes.

More importantly, I could now receive detailed information from hundreds upon hundreds of different sources without letting it vanish into the background or dissolve into chaos.

I could not make myself think faster.

I could not make my reaction speed faster.

But I could think and react based on fuller, more complete information, and with a much lower chance of making mistakes.

Even as this newly enhanced perception was pushed to its limit against the largest number of enemies I had ever faced, I still managed to upgrade Forced Acceleration to the next level.

With the level increase, the rhythm of the battlefield slowed around me.

That made processing all those details much easier. I finally realized how much important information I had missed in earlier battles, and how many mistakes I never should have made.

A fifty-percent increase in speed might not sound like much at first.

But think about it: the gap between a typical high school track star and an Olympic medalist was smaller than that.

I sprang forward, using Proximal Manipulation to accelerate with everything I had until I smashed into a metal bird at terrifying speed, the impact forceful enough to break its back.

Its body temperature spiked in an instant, and its feathers gleamed like molten metal.

But I had already rolled away with the force of the collision, dragging the bird along with Proximal Manipulation.

Then I released it.

It flew away like a high-speed missile, colliding perfectly with another airborne monster just as its self-destruction mechanism activated and turned it into a forty-thousand-pound bomb.

Fragments from the two blasted monsters scattered across the park. Some of them struck me and my friends as well.

But at that distance, the fragments were merely annoying to any of us, not especially dangerous.

Chi Li, meanwhile, stole the fire from two other birds.

Literally stole it.

Torrents of flame were forcibly dragged from their mouths and gathered into blinding spheres of light in her palms.

The two birds quickly turned to attack Chi Li, but in less than two seconds their wings stopped beating. Their bodies became rigid and dull, frost blooming across them.

Because my friend had not only stolen their magical fire—she had scraped every last bit of heat from their bodies.

They lost power and could no longer fly. They fell, smashing into the ground and shattering into pieces without self-destructing in fiery explosions.

The two birds into which she had forced the stolen heat from the others, however, inevitably exploded.

At the same time, Cheng Rui’s laser cannon displayed its full might, melting whole sections of the enemy formation into slag.

But the battle was not over.

The demons atop the towers hurled emerald fireballs at us, each the size of a beach ball.

One fireball exploded against Cheng Rui.

The tremendous force sent his two-ton suit of armor flying half a block, while his huge gun caught fire and scattered fragments across half the park.

Another fireball came for me.

I tried to dodge, tried to escape, but it followed me like a perfectly guided missile. The faster I flew, the faster it closed the distance.

Then came an explosion like artillery fire.

It burned away my suit below the knees, shattered both my ankles, and inflicted the first true agony I had felt in days.

Regeneration activated at once.

But the chained demons were already preparing more fireballs, and the remaining half of the enemy ground forces was charging toward us.

The battle was growing more intense.

The situation was getting worse.

I tried to attack the two demons, but their reactions were terrifyingly fast. In an instant, they launched another pair of emerald fireballs at me.

I attempted to circle around them and charge.

The move backfired. The magical projectiles drew closer.

They seemed to possess some uncanny ability not only to keep up with my speed, but also to move in ways that intercepted my trajectory.

I flew sideways. They followed closely. The distance between us shrank slowly, irresistibly.

I flew around obstacles, hoping to make them “lose lock,” or force them to crash and shake them off.

It was useless.

The enemy magic seemed to possess awareness of its own. With simple adjustments of course, it easily defeated my strategy, as if it had no need to obey the laws of motion at all.

Of course it did not need to obey ordinary physics.

This was magic.

Even when I tried to strike them from a distance with forcefields, my attacks merely passed through them without resistance and failed to detonate the fireballs early.

Thinking back, that made sense.

If I could make my magic act selectively, then the villains’ magic could naturally do the same.

As I flew along the iron wall that stretched toward the enemy’s main defensive stronghold in the city center, I accidentally collided with one of the fireballs.

Actually, truly collided with it.

Had it somehow anticipated my flight path and looped around to intercept me?

Whatever the reason, there was no time left to dodge.

In that critical instant, I struck it first with my fist.

Then the fireball exploded.

The violent blast instantly melted the glove of my suit and fused it to my hand. The impact slammed me into the wall with enough force to crack ribs.

Dizzy and reeling, adrenaline surging hard enough to bury the pain for the moment, I fled from that spot as fast as my abilities allowed.

The only reason the other fireball did not catch me was that I used the force of the explosion to abruptly change direction.

Then I saw one of the two demons summon another fireball to replace the one I had just struck and detonated.

Without hesitation, I accelerated straight ahead.

The thinning fog let me fly low between buildings without crashing into them.