34. Peril

Peril

The demon roared in pain and fury, then breathed a mass of green-black flame from its fanged mouth.

In an instant, every plant within forty meters died simply from being near that fire. The already churned earth dried, blackened, and withered.

I lay at the center of that unnatural blaze, and the creature’s breath hit my stomach like a heavy punch.

My skin did not burn with the normal pain of heat.

Instead, my lungs felt as if they had been set on fire, and the pain spread rapidly through my whole body.

Dizziness washed over me. Every struggle made my muscles burn, as if I had been holding my breath the entire time.

My chest heaved, trying uselessly to draw in air that was no longer there, and all I did was inhale more of that disgusting breath.

Even speeding myself up did not help.

Even when the demon appeared motionless to my eyes, the horrible effect continued worsening. Somehow, it kept pace with Forced Acceleration.

My muscles clenched under agonizing spasms. Strength drained out of my arms, and they were easily forced above my head.

The feedback from my enhanced senses dissolved into chaos. To my eyes, there was only blazing fire and the darkness drawing closer.

The goat-faced humanoid slammed its claws into Cheng Rui’s arm for the third time.

Sparks burst across the air, and several-centimeter-deep grooves were carved into the outer layer of Cheng Rui’s heavy armor.

Cheng Rui rolled with the force of the blow, shifting in an instant from a high guard to a low thrust.

A spike of diamond-fiber-reinforced Inconel shot toward the monster’s bumpy skin like a streak of black lightning.

The creature sprang back, but the spike still left a sizzling trail of red-black blood.

Cheng Rui had more than once been grateful for the many years he had spent in realistic, brutal medieval reenactment, and equally grateful that when building his equipment, he had not put every attribute point into Intelligence.

In response, the monster breathed green-black flame over Cheng Rui’s armor.

Almost instantly, the gasoline-powered auxiliary generator on the armor’s back stopped working as if some invisible hand had closed around its throat.

“Choked” was exactly the right word.

The sensors tracking the device’s operation showed that all oxygen had vanished from the intake. The incoming air had been replaced by a dangerous mixture of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, and corrosive substances the system could not identify at all.

It was not only the intake. The air mixture inside the engine itself had been magically altered.

Then something strange started happening to the gasoline.

Cheng Rui immediately abandoned further data collection and jettisoned the generator.

Driven by compressed air, it flew only a dozen meters before exploding into more green-black flame.

If the demon thought that attack would put Cheng Rui out of the fight, the quarter-ton armored fist that smashed into its ugly face corrected the misunderstanding.

Enraged, the monster hurled several spears that looked as if they had been made of solid shadow. They whistled through the air, piercing the armor’s arm and head.

Not that they were entirely harmless. All organic material in those sections suffered fairly severe damage.

Fortunately, during a recent overhaul, Cheng Rui had replaced it with all-ceramic insulation.

And Cheng Rui himself was completely enclosed inside the armor’s torso.

A hollow design would not only drastically weaken the combat suit’s arms, but the new helmet had been deliberately designed to attract enemy attacks, not to protect anything vital.

Without fear, Cheng Rui charged.

To close the distance, he took a full double-claw strike against his reinforced breastplate.

Once he was close, Cheng Rui stepped down on the demon’s foot and extended the metal spike mounted in the right heel of the combat suit.

The old Cheng Rui had been a fanatical Robocop fan.

He still remembered the scene where the cyborg policeman used a heel spike for extra purchase and brought a fleeing truck to a sudden stop. It had made a deep impression on him.

Now that scene would remain in this monster’s memory too.

Or at least, the new wound in its foot would.

Then the huge ugly thing launched an attack that was both a punch and a fireball, catching Cheng Rui off guard and plunging him into pain.

He did not notice the combat suit being knocked entirely off its feet.

He did not notice that he flew a full hundred meters, carving a trench through the park as he went.

When he was hit by that near-point-blank shell-like attack, he did not even look at the dozens of damage notifications and failure warnings.

That was because the combat suit’s curved chest plate had been bent dangerously inward, pinning him hard against the control seat.

The black-haired boy knew perfectly well that several of his ribs were probably broken.

Worse, he could not breathe.

His chest was being squeezed too tightly, leaving no room for his lungs.

Then the massive body of his demonic opponent towered over his prone form. One of its arms had been reduced to a slowly healing stump.

But the other was already gathering another fireball, ready to strike.

Without hesitation, Cheng Rui burned mana on Instant Repair, entering a race of life and death against his opponent.

Would he repair the armor first and punch this demon in the face again?

Or would he be struck by another close-range explosion—one that, this time, might very well kill him?