36. Covering Them with Everything I Had

Covering Them with Everything I Had

First, I adjusted the forces acting on myself, reducing friction, weight, and the other factors pinning me down by roughly an order of magnitude.

Trying that earlier had not worked.

For some reason, it worked now.

There was no time to investigate this unexpected blessing. Better to use it while I could.

Second, I used Proximal Manipulation to reach behind myself for the thing that might prove useful.

The great demon was either too relatively slow to react to these changes, or perfectly content to exhaust and suffocate me at its leisure.

Considering that until very recently it had held the advantage—and even now still did—perhaps inaction seemed like the wise choice.

At least, it probably thought so until a short sword stabbed into its belly.

The blade was wielded through Proximal Manipulation, not the strength of my arms.

The force behind the strike was less than half what I could have managed at the beginning of the battle—oh, roughly half a minute ago.

But I had enchanted that sword at the start of the fight, giving it the ability to cut with its own Proximal Manipulation.

Back then, I had not yet been drained into near uselessness.

So the blade sank straight in up to the hilt.

The monster screamed and recoiled in the strange slow motion characteristic of beings that did not possess true super-speed.

As soon as its grip loosened—even though, with a sword in its stomach, it still had not let go of me—Proximal Manipulation pulled me sideways instead of trying to fight its strength head-on.

For one long, horrible moment, nothing happened.

Then, aided by the massive reduction in friction, my wrist slipped out of its grasp.

My body slid along the ground as if across snow-covered ice. Then, over the protests of the many spasming muscles in my limbs, I was pulled into the air.

This time, when I sucked in a breath, new life stirred through my muscles.

Regeneration began working, now that it had many more things to repair.

Unfortunately, that did almost nothing for my exhaustion, and in any case, there was no time to recover slowly.

I took a hurried glance across the battlefield, then desperately drew on every scrap of speed my abilities could provide.

As I shot through the swarm of imps surrounding Chi Li, they scattered like a pile of pebbles kicked hard apart.

Every part of me wanted to stop and take care of my best friend, but the situation was urgent.

I could not slow down.

At that moment, the demon standing above Cheng Rui’s prone and battered armored body had gathered a fireball the size of a washing machine, preparing to throw it down at him.

I knew I could not stop the explosion from happening.

I was not even certain I had enough strength left to carry armored Cheng Rui out of danger, or to knock the demon away.

So I did the only thing I could.

I rushed in and wrapped myself around both the fireball and the demon’s arm.

The explosion hit me like my entire body had been struck at once by a thick baseball bat.

The blast dislocated both my arms. My face was bruised and bloody. One leg twisted at a deeply unnatural angle. My whole torso went painful and numb, as if sensation itself had been beaten out of it.

I wanted to rest in the furrow I had gouged through the park and wait quietly for my regeneration to fix all of this.

I even wanted to pass out, if only so I would not have to endure the pain while the injuries still existed.

But the two terrible monsters were still nearby, and my friends could not win this battle on their own.

The moment regeneration repaired my eyes enough for me to see again, I flew back up.

My body was… probably in horrifying condition.

So horrifying I could no longer even tell exactly how bad it was. Muscles, bones, ligaments, and organs all sank into the same state of tortured, exhausted numbness, as if they were close to shutting down entirely.

But I had experienced that state several times now, both before and after gaining powers.

Eventually, I had learned how to endure it without blacking out.

If my father knew, he would probably say I had finally grown up.

Which was exactly why I had stopped listening to him years ago.

By then, Cheng Rui had struggled back to his feet. His armor was repairing its damage at a magical speed fast enough to make my own regeneration look inadequate.

So I flew toward Chi Li.

I kicked away the last few imps pressing down on her, only to realize that her condition was not good either.

She was nowhere near as badly hurt as I was, but she was badly injured, and she did not have my regeneration or resilience.

Fortunately, the two monsters were worse off than we were.

The demon I had stabbed looked half-healed already.

The one caught in its own explosion was still missing two arms.

No, the tiny misshapen little arm it was growing back did not count.

“You need treatment now,” I told Chi Li urgently when we regrouped, while Cheng Rui stood guard above us like a loyal bodyguard.

My enhanced senses were still badly scrambled, but I was fairly certain the red-haired girl had internal bleeding in several places.

“We should retreat to base, and then—”

“Screw that. I just need fire,” Chi Li said through gritted teeth, her voice hard with resolve. “We can’t let them recover and follow us back to base, or—”

“Liya kills them like bugs?” I suggested, swallowing my pride. “Judging by what she can do, I think she’s on a completely different level.”

If I had been alone, maybe I would already have thrown myself recklessly at the enemy again.

But this was not just about me.

And after looking more carefully, I could tell Cheng Rui was not in good shape inside his armor either.

Cutting our losses and retreating might be wiser than any other choice.

I did not want to lose my friends just to kill a pair of great demons.

“They’ll grow stronger,” Chi Li insisted. She could barely stand, but her voice held a fierce certainty. “They’re free to cause as much destruction as they can now, and there are survivors in the suburbs. If we don’t end this here, people are going to die because of it.”

The unshakable determination in her words, her fury at the enemy, the way she refused to change her mind despite the enormous risk…

A week ago, Chi Li would never have done something like this.

Then again, after this magical invasion, none of us were the people we used to be.

“At least tell me you have a way to heal yourself. You can barely stand!” My argument sounded weak, even in my own head before I said it aloud, and we both knew it was little more than a token protest.

On the other hand, that did not mean I was wrong.