75. Enhanced Weapons

Enhanced Weapons

An eight-meter serrated sword swept through the space where my head had been a moment earlier. As it broke the sound barrier, it cracked the air like a whip.

I gave a strained grunt, twisted away from the next follow-up slash, and teleported aside.

Just as with every previous attempt at the same move, the bald, gray-skinned, grotesquely muscular humanoid followed me through space.

I tried to fly away next, but the instant I cleared its attack range, the demon appeared in front of me and swung its sword.

The blade struck my ribs heavily, cut through my Super Suit, and sliced into my skin.

Which basically meant I got a paper cut.

My recent upgrade to Nearby Object Manipulation had successfully canceled most of the energy that made it through, but as anyone who has ever had a paper cut knows, paper cuts still hurt.

Below me, a squad of soldier-looking people was attacking a building used to summon sword-guards.

Rank after rank of sword-wielding undead in plate armor stood between them and the building, blocking every approach, while the enemy pulled skeletal archers or imps from elsewhere to deal with the more mobile humans.

The demon tried to give me another paper cut.

Its face met my fist instead.

It staggered back, spraying black blood and broken tusks, but otherwise endured the blow and shifted its sword between my follow-up kick and its target.

I used Nearby Object Manipulation and Force Adjustment to stop myself almost instantly, just fast enough to avoid being impaled on its weapon.

And regardless of my defenses, I had very nearly been impaled.

Unlike the lower enemy warriors, this sword demon’s weapon was clearly saturated with magic. Its power was at least six times greater than an executioner’s halberd or a sword-guard’s armor. Destroying it would take me a full minute, and its wielder was not about to give me that time.

A tall, broad-shouldered soldier with dark skin rushed to the front of the line, holding a rifle in each hand.

He was the man with the very strong aura, almost as impressive as Zhao Linshou. While we had been dealing with earlier matters and preparing, I had learned that his name was Zhao Mancheng.

A strange name, but who was Ye Lin to criticize?

Although he and his targets were both moving around the battlefield and crossing obstacles, and despite the fact that he held an automatic rifle in each hand, his shots were precise.

Even while firing on full auto, he not only aimed each weapon at a different target, but made every bullet land exactly where he wanted.

Every round struck a sword-guard directly between the brows.

The bullets hit the magically reinforced helmets at tremendous speed, pierced through, and then ricocheted inside, the fragments churning undead flesh into pulp.

In a few seconds, sixteen sword-guards fell dead.

As the others in the squad opened fire, more sword-guards followed. Their marksmanship was not as stunning as Zhao Mancheng’s, but it was still deadly.

Another demon appeared beside me, forcing me to block with my forearm and suffer yet another paper cut.

Even so, I showed the two attackers a tooth-only smile that had nothing to do with joy, then attacked both of them with kinetic lances.

The kinetic lances were weaker than my punches, but they were thinner, invisible, and almost instantaneous. They carved shallow wounds across the sword demons’ bodies.

If they wanted a battle of attrition, I was happy to oblige. The surge of energy produced as the line of sword-guards below collapsed more than made up for the fatigue I felt.

Sweat kept gathering. My muscles protested beneath my Super Suit as I used Forced Acceleration to increase my speed, fighting two enemies at once and gradually gaining the upper hand.

After enhancing more than forty weapons, managing even that was not easy.

But this war was turning toward a decisive confrontation. If we did not go all out now, then when exactly were we saving ourselves for? The afterlife has…