86. Strange Captives

Strange Captives

I was faster than a bullet as I dove toward the rear ranks of the skeletal mages, an enhanced demon sword in each hand.

Simply flying through their formation completely disrupted it. Before they could react, two hundred skeletal mages had been cut to pieces.

For the first time in several battles, waves of energy flowed through my veins. My magical power climbed one step, then another.

I left that fact for after the fight and charged into the second line of skeletal mages, killing dozens more.

Slowly, however, they began to react. Many of them were already close to completing their spells.

I had learned that undead did not feel confusion, surprise, or fear. They responded to circumstances quickly and methodically.

The mind directing them, however, could still be surprised.

So after roughly a third of the skeletal mages had been destroyed, one of them triggered a black magical shield. Before I decapitated the caster, the shield swallowed a great deal of my kinetic energy and momentum.

I swerved and rolled under several black beams, which would have produced a similar effect if used offensively.

But against the dozens of gray tentacles stretching out to trap me, they were useless.

More and more tentacles wrapped around my limbs and waist. This time there were dozens, not the nine that had caught me before.

When the enemy believed I was firmly bound, they began pulling me back.

The tentacles instantly dissolved into smoke and failed to slow me at all.

Constant Force lv3: Resist all forms of change except those produced through physical means. Immune to supernatural negative emotions, diseases, and traps.

“That’s right, bastards. How do you like that?”

I completely ignored the tentacle mages whose magic no longer worked on me and continued eliminating any dark mages who exposed themselves.

The blade demons tried to approach me with their irritating ability to teleport into a target’s path, but their own allies blocked them, and they could not teleport into solid objects.

Twice, they managed to find an opening, only to discover too late that anything weighing more than a hundred pounds and moving at Mach five was less a target than a cannon shell.

Burning arrows rained down.

Even moving at my ridiculous speed, even turning six or seven times per second, there were too many skeletal archers around me. Sheer density of fire was enough to hit me.

Most of the burning liquid metal splashed harmlessly across my body. It left a few abrasions only because I ran into it at that speed, not because the enemy weapons were particularly impressive.

My regeneration easily kept up with those small injuries, as it did with the occasional wounds caused by blade demons, so I ignored them and enjoyed the slow but steady growth they gave me.

From my perspective, the monsters gradually organized.

They brought blade demons into my path to slow me, arranged their mages to fire green and black spell bolts whenever an opening appeared in close combat, and generally did everything they could to make my life annoying.

Then, after they had all focused entirely on me and pushed me toward one corner, a beam of destruction cut through their fragile formation.

It was followed by Little Black’s roar. Its disintegration rounds blasted skeletons apart and burned deep gouges into demons.

When the monsters began turning again to deal with the force attacking them from the side, Zhao Mancheng’s bullets came from near-invisible shadow and punched through their eye sockets or other critical points.

Caught between two enemies they could not truly counter, the monsters collapsed like cheap props in five minutes of fighting.

After the previous six levels of exhausting, aggravating combat, it felt wonderful to smash enemies who had not had time to prepare.

“Well… that was too easy,” I said with a grin when the last enemy fell. “Let’s do it again.”

The rotating door blocking the passage to the sixth level was broken open as easily as the one before it. Under the push of the disks and its own momentum, it slammed into the ceiling above hard enough to shake the entire tower.

The growth from the previous fight had not yet faded, and I charged into the next room eagerly expecting another battle.

What waited for us was far worse than expected.

“You all right, little girl? I haven’t heard you say anything…” Zhao Linshou and the others entered through the passage Little Black had blasted open, jumping in to check whether something had finally managed to hurt me.

After all, I had been silent for a full two minutes.

“Those… are they really…”

“Yes… yes, they are. I checked.”

More than a thousand dazed men and women lay naked on the dark room’s floor, bound in chains.

Each had a chain around the neck, forcing them to lie on their backs and stare blankly into nothing. None of them seemed to care about their situation.

They just lay there, barely breathing, doing nothing.

Through Force Sense, I could tell that their hearts were beating and their lungs were working, but that sense was not delicate enough to reveal detailed physiology. I could not tell exactly what was wrong with them.

Assuming there was anything wrong beyond the shock and terror of being captured by monsters.

“We have to get them out,” Chi Li said. No, ordered. “If we leave them here and more monsters come, they could die.”

“If our mission fails, they die anyway,” Zhao Mancheng growled back.

The two glared at each other.

“Think, girl, think! In a place like this, which is less a base than a superweapon, the only reason anyone would chain captives like this is to delay whoever is trying to stop them from blowing up the entire country.”

He looked at Zhao Linshou and me.

“You know we have to leave them. What are we supposed to do for them? Take them with us? We cannot protect them. Escort them down the tower? That would take hours.”

“You want to just abandon them?!” Chi Li screamed, her eyes literally igniting. “Look at them. Look how pitiful they are! We have to find some way to help them!”

Zhao Mancheng shook his head and focused on Zhao Linshou and me again.

“We can at least release them,” I said when the old hunter chose to stay silent. “Breaking all their restraints will take less than a minute. That way, if something happens, at least they can run.”

Though they did not look capable of even that.

With no further support or objection, I began flying around at superspeed, tearing chains apart with Nearby Object Manipulation as easily as snapping threads. I also poked the captives sharply, hoping to wake them from whatever stupor held them.

Maybe it worked. Maybe seeing the chains broken gave them some new hope.

In twos and threes, they began staggering to their feet and wandering aimlessly.

They looked less like zombies and more like people drunk or drugged out of their minds.

I wished I could do more for them without jeopardizing the mission, but I could not, so I flew back to the others.

“Has anyone seen stairs to the next level? Watching them like this is depressing.”

“No.” Zhao Mancheng told me with a displeased grunt.

He had been looking too. On every previous floor, the staircase had been easy to find.

“Hey, kids, do you smell something strange?” Zhao Linshou asked, carefully scanning our surroundings.

“Not bad exactly. Just odd. Like fruit left in the sun, but not yet rotten.”

“No. I don’t smell anything.”

That seemed to be true. Despite my Perception points, the old hunter’s nose was better than mine.

Then again, he probably had some scouting or hunting-related ability, and tracking by scent suited him perfectly.

“I do not smell anything either,” Chi Li added.

Zhao Mancheng merely grunted in denial.

“Hm. The smell is strange.” The old man sniffed. “And it is coming from every direction around us.”