47. Building the Giant Tower

Building the Giant Tower

Six demons rushed me, trying to draw my attention, while dozens of ghouls curved around our fight and headed straight for the slowly rising tower behind me.

On the far side of Cheng Rui’s creation, Chi Li was busy holding off wave after wave of ghouls and ghoul infantry.

The enemies used speed, swarm tactics, and the fact that they were not using fire magic to try to wear down the red-haired witch, break through her defensive spells, and reach their target.

Whoever was commanding the monsters had clearly noticed Cheng Rui’s new “project” and strongly objected to it.

Neither of us intended to let them have their way.

Chi Li had shifted from ranged attacks and magical absorption to casting a thin but extremely powerful offensive defense. So far, anything that tried to pass through it had been erased.

Since I was not as flexible or versatile as she was, I had to devote most of my effort to creating Persistent Forcefields to handle defense for me.

The ghouls discovered the problem the moment they entered a forty-meter radius. Several invisible blades of force sliced them apart.

The same bladelike fields of Proximal Manipulation spun around me and struck the charging demons one after another, but only left scars across their iron-gray, pebble-hard skin.

My Forcefield Creation was not yet good enough to give cutting ability to something without an existing sharp edge.

In exchange, these completely invisible blades neither broke nor stopped when they failed to overcome such massive obstacles. They simply passed through the targets, completed a full orbit around me, and struck again.

The twenty-meter length of rebar I was swinging suddenly doubled in length halfway through the arc.

Its length was a distance.

It was a weapon I was using, which meant that distance was related to me.

And it was not a living creature, so the change was entirely possible.

Enhanced by Proximal Manipulation and Force Adjustment, I swung the metal bar at extreme speed, and it endured the motion without bending or breaking.

When its length doubled, its angular velocity remained the same, which meant the kinetic energy of my full-power swing suddenly increased nearly fourfold.

The metal rod swept through a demon’s neck as easily as a tire iron through a watermelon.

A flock of metal birds attempted a suicide dive against Cheng Rui’s tower.

I used Temporal Jump to intercept them in the air, wasting no time on acceleration or actually crossing the distance. The rebar had shortened to half its original length and was already halfway through a swing.

Before the lead bird even realized I was there, its head burst into metal fragments and molten slime.

Before the flock could adjust, I used Temporal Jump twice more and dealt with two more birds.

Metal birds were nearly as tough as tanks, and they had the annoying habit of exploding violently upon death, turning their thirty-ton bodies into a storm of shrapnel and magical fragments.

As the first third of the flock exploded into pieces, I returned to the ground through a combination of Spatial Jump and Temporal Jump, badly injuring and knocking away the birds behind them.

At the speed they were flying, metal birds could not recover quickly.

And if you hit the ground at five hundred kilometers per hour, being as tough as a tank would not save you.

I ignored the surge of power from their deaths—my third since the battle began—because I was already diving toward the skeleton archers trying to get close to Cheng Rui and shoot him dead.

While defending, I could not upgrade my abilities or attributes.

Even a few seconds of distraction while I adjusted myself would let the monsters swarm in, kill Cheng Rui, and then attack Chi Li from behind.

Breaking their formations no longer bought us breathing room.

Their numbers had grown to the point where there were not so much enemy “formations” as a loose sea of monsters drowning us in violent waves.

And they were succeeding.

Fast, superpowered, and enhanced as I was, I could not be everywhere. I could not notice and evade every attack. Not even close.

And although my resilience and adaptability reduced every blow I suffered to something equivalent to a paper cut, a pinprick, or a cigarette burn, enough attacks would still bring me down eventually.

As more and more monsters arrived, a tempting voice whispered deep in my mind that I could stop fighting at any time.

Temporal Jump and Defensive Counter meant the lightning towers no longer limited my movements.

If I wanted, I could reach almost anywhere in the city with essentially no obstruction, moving long distances without actually crossing them.

If I needed to, I could leave the city entirely in seconds.

But that would mean abandoning my friends and every other survivor to their fate.

Over the past few minutes, the thought of leaving the city to bring back help had also crossed my mind.

I had dismissed it almost immediately.

I did not trust myself to be willing to return to this monster-infested place after I found that help.

So I held the line and hoped Cheng Rui would come up with a way for all of us to survive.

Emergency Charge +1.
Enhanced Electrical Engineer +1.
Enhanced Armorer +1.

Cheng Rui ignored the skill-up notifications and wiped sweat from his eyes with a dirty, damp sleeve, forcing himself to concentrate.

This was his fifth consecutive use of Emergency Charge. The flood of energy entering his body was no longer enough to dispel exhaustion.

Worse, the bone-deep burning, pain, and hollowness grew stronger with every use. His arms trembled. Each breath came short and tight. His thoughts slowed.

Knowing in theory that the skill would permanently reduce his maximum mana and stamina was one thing.

Feeling himself being hollowed out piece by piece until only a shell remained was another.

He clenched his fists and focused on the work.

None of them had the luxury of rest.

For him, rest would not help anyway.

He created more copper, then used it along with splintered wood from a ruined house to build more of the tower’s outer shell.

The thick, gleaming red-brown cylinder grew inch by inch. It was already twice as tall as Cheng Rui’s powered armor.

This was the largest thing he had ever made. He had invested an amount of mana equal to three and a half times his maximum capacity.

That was more than ten times the mana he had spent making his armor, even though he had recycled the armor itself to reduce the cost of the electronics required.

And if his calculations about the battlefield terrain were right…