91. Hard-to-Kill “Terminators”

Hard-to-Kill “Terminators”

Halfway across the room, a furious battle raged.

Beams of impossible heat, waves of biting cold, twelve constructs made of blazing-bright flame, neon-green bursts of radiation, and tides of blood crashed against one another.

What had once been Chi Li had become a twelve-meter-tall avatar of fire, wielding two plasma maces, each taller than I was.

She was actually winning that tower-shaking fight. Every exchange melted more armor from the warriors and burned another patch of flesh into black ruin.

But the problem was that she had gone all out, and these final constructs were not the greatest threat.

The gray-black warrior’s mace suddenly lengthened mid-swing. The spiked head became more wrecking ball than melee weapon as it struck my right knee.

I frowned and heard something snap.

But at this point, I no longer needed my legs for either leverage or balance.

I appeared behind the warrior in an instant and punched him while using Force Adjustment to give his armor an effect that amplified vibration, the kind of effect that could shake any solid object apart.

However, the armor turned black. The magic effect weakened, flickered, and failed entirely a few seconds later.

The lightning user instantly teleported within reach. Wearing a helmet infused with dark magic, he headbutted me, partially canceling my kinetic defenses. Then, while I staggered, he stepped back and slammed his electrified mace into my chest.

The moment I caught my breath, he teleported closer again and tried to follow up.

So I entered stopped time.

Everyone and everything froze.

I took a deep breath. Then another.

Then I drove an uppercut into the lightning user’s jaw.

He did not fly back. Lightning did not shock my fingers. In the infinitesimal pause between one instant and the next, none of those things could happen.

But during the few seconds of action available to me, I could still strike his stupid helmet again and again, dozens of times faster than any martial artist in history.

Time resumed.

The lightning user’s head exploded, helmet and all.

His body staggered, blood spraying from the broken stump of his neck, but it did not stop.

Even then, his neck had already begun to regrow.

“Oh no, you don’t!”

I stopped time again, this time for longer.

I struck his shoulders, hips, and spine, extending the time stop again and again until I had to stop and breathe.

The instant I stopped, his entire body tore apart as every blow took effect at once.

But if I had been operating at normal maximum effort, that was almost the equivalent of spending an hour’s worth of stamina.

Given my significant superhuman capability, that was like an Olympic athlete running a hundred-meter sprint. Not enough to completely exhaust me, but definitely enough that I needed to catch my breath before trying again.

The mangled body became a cloud of black-blue mist.

By the time the first explosion began, the mist had already split into three parts.

Even to me, the explosion was deafening. An unprotected human within two hundred meters would have died instantly.

For someone like me, with superhuman durability and extra defenses, it was only enough to stagger me.

Then came the second explosion.

Then the third.

Then… no. Pairs of explosions were happening at the same time.

Most of the floor we were on was swallowed by an expanding inferno, but through Force Adjustment I could see through the flames.

Chi Li hovered in midair, radiating enough heat to turn iron into slag from fifteen paces away.

With both arms, she also threw fireballs of equal intensity at her two opponents.

They tried to teleport away, but those fist-sized fireballs were insanely fast. The air they passed through actually exploded.

They crossed more than a hundred meters in a thousandth of a second, moving so fast that even with my superspeed and heightened awareness, I could barely perceive them.

Each enemy was struck four times. When the flames weakened, half…