102. An Enormous “Bullet”

An Enormous “Bullet”

Lightning crackled along those tree-like horns. Bolts almost as thick as houses formed, then tore through the air with the same overwhelming power and lethal purpose as our weapon’s beam.

Despite his vast, unstoppable physical strength, despite his mind-warping aura, despite his ability to alter terrain and weather, despite the endless monsters spawning behind him, that lightning was the enemy’s most dangerous power.

With it, he could strike anything within the horizon in an instant, and for someone as tall as him, the horizon was more than a hundred and fifty kilometers away.

He could destroy any fortified position, erase anything that dared challenge him—from a single soldier to a warship—and intercept more dangerous attacks like nuclear missiles if needed…

And now that lightning was coming for us.

The overwhelmingly powerful magical bolt closed to within three hundred meters of our position…

Then it was intercepted by the outer perimeter of silver pillars Lily and I had placed.

Silver was the most conductive metal known to man, and these pillars were thicker than any wire ever built.

Under the enhancement of my ability, the silver’s conductivity had not only increased by a huge margin; its melting point had risen while its temperature had been driven sharply downward.

The pillars absorbed the magical lightning, conducted it into the earth, and cooled back down below freezing before the second volley arrived.

Then our weapon hit Mort in the face.

“We did it!” Lily shouted triumphantly.

“No, not yet,” I shot back before everyone could get too hopeful. “He was hurt, but this is more like a cigarette burn than a serious wound.”

Assuming that body could feel pain, the injuries probably hurt. But we would need many, many such cigarette burns before we could actually stop a very angry demon wizard from blasting all our faces off.

“Increase output to fifty percent,” Cheng Rui announced, and the next beam did not grow stronger…

But it lasted twice as long.

It burned across the avatar’s cheek, cutting open dozens of cubic yards of nearly indestructible flesh. Even a wound that massive, however, was not a truly serious injury to someone the size of a mountain.

And now that mountain was turning toward us and taking a step in our direction.

More lightning hammered our position. The avatar’s horns blazed like a crown of stormlight, but the perimeter of huge, magically enhanced lightning rods could hold it back for the moment…

For now.

Mort’s demonic form took another step toward us. Even as the beam carved into his neck, he raised a forearm the size of the Empire State Building to block it.

When his foot touched the ground, a forest of iron spikes grew outward in every direction, but that would not become a problem until he was within five kilometers.

No, the main problem was that he was still growing.

It was as if every step he took on our planet made him larger. He had already grown by nearly a third of his original height, more than doubling in volume, and presumably increasing his strength and endurance along with it.

By the time he was close enough to simply stomp us flat, those gains would double again.

It had been half an hour since he appeared. He had spent most of that time playing with the poor soldiers who gave their lives trying to stop him, and he had already grown enough to make Cheng Rui’s original predictions about the weapon’s effectiveness wrong.

If he kept growing…

But we would not have the luxury of watching him grow larger and laugh at our best efforts, because he was no longer playing with us.

His continuous lightning bombardment forced everyone except Lily and me behind the runic dome to hide from the flashes and the rapidly rising heat, while the giant avatar’s strides grew longer than before.

At Mort’s current speed, he would be on top of us in minutes instead of half an hour.

“Maximum power!” Cheng Rui announced, and somehow we heard his voice over the…