61. The Giant Axe Fails to Cut

The Giant Axe Fails to Cut

Name: Ye Lin
Profile: Female human, 17 years, 3 months, 13 days old

Abilities [1 available / 57 total]
Temporal Jump lv1
Enhanced Regeneration lv4
Force Adjustment lv3
Force Sense lv2
Forcefield Creation lv2
Forced Acceleration lv3
Constant Force lv2
Instant Action lv2
Persistent Force lv2
Defensive Counter lv1
Proximal Manipulation lv3
Super Suit lv1
Spatial Distortion lv1
Spatial Jump lv1

Attributes [1 available / 57 total]
Strength 28, Agility 14, Intelligence 6, Perception 9, Spirit 14, Luck 2

The ghosts had given me only one increase in power, not enough to make any major change.

It was enough, however, for a small attribute boost and one new skill.

Now that I had seen how he fought, I was certain of my choice.

First, one point into Strength. The extra stamina and durability might matter against an enemy who could keep hurting me over time.

My body grew slightly taller, and almost imperceptibly more solid.

I also confirmed that adding two points of Strength for every point of Agility and Spirit was the critical ratio that kept me from turning into a grotesquely overmuscled monster like my old man.

As for the skill…

He had just finished telling me that tricks were a waste, and throughout this entire fight, he had shown a preference for only two weapons.

Why not give his narrow-mindedness the reward it deserved?

Focused Invulnerability lv1:
Once per minute, choose one target and one specific action. Ignore the effects produced by that target performing that action.

“…I will ask you one last time. Are you willing to abandon this doomed cause and reach your full potential?”

“Do you realize how stupid you sound?” I taunted him from a safe distance, using the time to regenerate until I was fully healthy again.

“Seriously, are you a Saturday-morning cartoon supervillain? Does this so-called potential make people stupider, or have you always been this insane and I just never noticed?”

Almost certainly the latter.

For years, I had either been too afraid of him or too angry at him to think clearly. My improved Spirit made that easier to handle now.

“It seems I was too soft on you.”

In the blink of an eye, he shifted from mad recruitment speech to violent punishment mode. The haft of that enormous axe swung toward my head.

That had always been his response to any backtalk, so I was ready.

The instant he committed fully to the swing, I used Temporal Jump to blink behind him and kicked him in his now extraordinarily oversized backside.

It did not injure his body.

It injured his dignity and self-control.

He whirled around faster than ever, his huge face flushed red, his even larger axe tearing through the sound barrier.

But I had expected that too, and prepared for it.

This time I blinked away a little faster than before.

I jumped behind him again and hammered kicks and punches into his lower ribs, but he did not move.

Instead of turning again, he drove the axe haft backward into my face and forced me away.

The dizziness and the black eye that would have turned into a brutal bruise on an ordinary person vanished in a wave of regeneration.

I flew back in, determined to keep the pressure on.

The axe twisted sharply.

I teleported inside his reach, too close for him to use it properly, and hit him with an uppercut empowered by Proximal Manipulation and Force Adjustment at full output.

The blow struck his jaw with the force of a tank cannon. It would have knocked even me flat for several seconds.

He took one step back, then came swinging again.

The axe struck my still-extended arm below the shoulder, sliced easily through my suit, and smashed me down with tremendous force.

The impact hurt.

The kick that followed hurt worse, launching me through the new sales kiosk that had been built just before the invasion began.

The next instant, I was already in close again, kicking the bastard between the legs.

He grunted.

So he did feel it.

Then he chopped at my ribs with the axe…

Or at least he tried.

The axe once again cut through my suit as if it were nothing, but it scraped harmlessly across my skin and failed to penetrate.

Before he recovered from his surprise, I punched him in the face, broke his nose again, and forced him back a step or two.

He was not completely invincible.

As the fight continued, my attacks were doing more damage and pushing him farther.

Unfortunately, he had regeneration too, and even without it, I was at a disadvantage.

Still, now I could hit him more freely without worrying that his first counterattack would immediately cripple me.

I took a low sweep meant to cut off my legs below the knee and traded it for a punch to his throat.

I won that exchange.

The third time the axe failed to cut me, his eyes narrowed in anger.

“What’s wrong?” I mocked him, because turnabout was fair play. “You can dish it out, but you can’t take it, old man?”

“I see…” His anger shifted into smug satisfaction. “You are finally starting to enjoy this fight, are you, little girl?”

“…What?”

I froze for a fraction of a second.

The haft of the axe slammed into my right hip with enough force to leave bruising.

“Does winning bring out your true nature?” The next round forced me onto the defensive for several seconds, his furious hacking, striking, and kicking driving me back. “You cast aside your so-called morals so easily.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Another uppercut bought me some space, but his countering kick temporarily dislocated my knee.

At least flight meant I did not need my legs for balance. It still hurt like hell.

“Just because I enjoy beating evil bastards like you doesn’t mean we’re the same.”

“Of course we are. You forget that I started by beating evil bastards too.”

He smiled sincerely, somehow convinced that he had gained the advantage in this argument.

“Or at least people we were taught to think of as evil. I’m quite certain those people in the Gulf War thought we were evil too. You know what? None of us were wrong. Good and evil are only a matter of where you stand.”

“Maybe, if you’re a deranged murderer trying to excuse your own killing.”

I teleported around him.

Somehow, he reacted even to attacks from the strangest angles. He drew closer and closer until, at last, the axe came down toward my head…

And only knocked me back a little.

That finally made him pause.

I enjoyed the look of surprise on his face.

“Seriously? That’s your excuse for siding with literal demons?”

“…You’re immune to the axe,” he said with a frown, ignoring the point he could not answer as usual. “I really should have expected that.”

That comment made everything click.

I realized what had been wrong about this entire fight so far.

He was not injured.

Not from my attacks—so far, they truly had not done much to him.

From his own.

He was stronger than me. He was swinging that gigantic axe. He should have been able to hurt himself.

And Defensive Counter should have reflected the force of his own attacks back onto him.

But it had not.

Even though Defensive Counter was applied to Force Adjustment, and Force Adjustment should have protected me from all incoming attacks.

Or it should have.

Just as I had expected my Force-Adjustment-enhanced attacks to hurt an enemy who could not possibly be that much stronger than me.

Just as I had expected my enhanced super-speed to outpace any man built like a mountain of muscle.

None of that had happened.

And all of it had one thing in common.