Chương 35: 31: Many Hands

I tried to attack the two demons and they sent another pair of emerald fireballs straight at me. Trying to fly around them and charge only brought the magical missiles closer as they matched my speed and moved to intercept. I moved away and they followed, the distance between us slowly, inexorably diminishing. Flying around obstacles, trying to get them to 'lose lock' or slam into things didn't work either, the enemy magic simply adjusting trajectory as if it didn't have to follow the laws of motion.

Which, naturally, it didn't; it was magic. Even trying to blast them with force remotely only resulted in my attempts passing through them uselessly rather than detonating the fireballs early. In retrospect, it made sense; I could make my magic interact selectively so why couldn't the bad guys? Flying around the iron wall extending to the enemy's main fortified position downtown, I stumbled into one of the fireballs - literally. Had it somehow anticipated my trajectory and flown around to intercept?

Whatever the case, there was no time to dodge; I struck it fist-first and it exploded, melting my suit's gloves into my hands and smashing me against the wall with rib-cracking force. Shrugging off the dizziness, too full of adrenaline to mind the pain, I flew off as quickly as my powers allowed. The only reason the other fireball hadn't caught up was my abrupt, explosion-powered shift in direction. Then I saw one of the two demons conjure another fireball to replace the one I'd just hit.

I sped away in a straight line, the thinning mist letting me fly low between buildings without bumping into them. The world seemed to slow down until the fiery projectiles and I were moving at marathon runner speeds while even arrows in flight barely crawled on and everything else all but stood still. It gave me some much-needed time to think, because fighting as I usually did didn't seem to be working.

On the ground at the closest part of the plaza, Jerry's turrets and oversized pistols were firing beam after beam at a literal wall of enemy infantry, dead eyes glaring behind heavy armor that was repeatedly burned through by lasers. Yet the heavily armored undead did not die easily or quickly, each of them more like Captain America in heavy armor than zombies. The tide was advancing and without his big gun Jerry couldn't keep up with their numbers.

At the far side of the plaza and near the edge of my superpowered awareness, Mandy had drawn the ire and arrows of over two hundred skeletal archers. A swarm of diminutive fireballs the size of raindrops was flying out of her palms, each little explosive bead striking at a single arrow and blowing up, either destroying it or knocking it off-course.

The short, red-headed sorceress appeared to be at her limit; already arrows were slipping through her defense and more archers were arriving from deeper in the enemy's territory. Screw it. It was going to suck but Mandy was my best friend so I was doing it anyway. I flew in so tight a turn darkness bit at the edges of my vision, blood roared in my ears and my rib cage was squeezed by the hand of a giant; paying attention to adjusting g-forces properly would only delay things.

The fireballs followed, getting even closer as the maneuver cost me in speed. I crossed the entirety of the park in under a second of real-time, though it seemed much longer from my perspective, then slammed into the throng of skeletal archers from the side. Bones reinforced with magic shattered like chalk hit by a sledgehammer. Ligaments of liquid metal burst into a rain of searing droplets, endless quivers of magical thermite exploded, burning countless tiny holes in my suit.

Dozens of enemies were crushed, each impact robbing me of far less momentum than it should have until I finally came to a stop in a pile of bones and slag. Then, in a ten-cubic-yard sphere around me, I magnified explosive forces to everything but me. A split-second later, the two fireballs chasing me hit and exploded. Two enormous, bone-rattling, full-body impacts crushed me into the ground.

My eardrums burst instantly, my eyes felt like someone had punched them both twice, everything else was left bruised and battered. Before gaining powers, they would have been worse than any other time I'd been wounded, the accident that had nearly killed me included. Now, they only rated a distant third - I didn't even pass out. The skeleton archers were less lucky. Magnified by my own powers, the explosive force of the fireballs had been increased by an order of magnitude.

The blasts had hit the closest skeletons, turning them into over a ton of shrapnel moving at well over the speed of sound. They left the effect of my amplification without slowing down because objects in motion remain in motion unless stopped, then swept away most of the skeleton archers in the field. If the fireballs had initially been like tank shells, they'd gained the firepower of cruise missiles post-enhancement. I pulled myself up with Proximakinesis, cleared the dust with a weak Forcefield.

My regenerated eyes opened to see half a city block of blasted, burning ground littered with the remains of enemy archers. Oh, and two fireballs held in suspension over my head, shaking against the invisible force holding them in place.

"Thanks for the save," Mandy's voice whispered in my ear despite the redhead being nearly three hundred feet away - and my eardrums having yet to heal.

"Could you help Jerry? I can hold these spells for a minute or two so our two chained friends can't produce more."

"Sure," I said, feeling somewhat dumb for doing so. Could Mandy even listen from across the park? And since when could she talk from a distance like that? I stretched and winced; nothing was broken, or if it had been my regeneration had already fixed it. My suit was a blackened ruin though, and my skin was seared raw under the melted costume. My everything was bruised - even just breathing or moving around hurt - and that wasn't going away any time soon.

Progressive Regeneration had hit diminishing returns in its growth and with blunt trauma affecting that much body volume fixing it would take longer than this fight would last. Since it wasn't life threatening I told myself to suck it and flew out to help Jerry. The armored wights had almost reached the boy's location when I got there.

Instead of slamming into lines of infantry far tougher and better in melee than skeletal archers, I put a finger on Jerry's power armor, adjusted its weight downwards by and order of magnitude, then split Proximakinesis to lift both him and me away from the charging enemies. We couldn't fly too high lest we invite a thunderbolt from the enemy's main tower downtown, but we could certainly outpace any pursuit on foot while Jerry's turrets kept firing at them.

"Hey there, nerd," I greeted the boy with a smirk.

"Ever heard of running? Ten seconds more and you'd have been sushified."

"Says the meathead cheerleader who already got barbecued," he shot back with a smile. Then he shot off the heads of four wights at once, the show-off. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"That was totally intentional and worked as intended," I countered.

"Because I, unlike some people, know when to fall back." No I didn't, but Jerry didn't know that. He was also worse than me about overestimating himself soo...

"Anyway, consider your bacon saved. Need anything? Mandy can hold the enemy artillery back for a time."

"Can we gather the remains of my laser cannon? We don't need everything, just the important bits." He pointed at where bits of electronics had dropped after the demons' initial barrage.

"And how quickly could you fly me to the Mall afterwards?"

"No big deal, it will only take a few seconds," I told him, ignoring the continued protests of my body. Those were future-Maya's problems.

"But what happened to not splitting the party?"

"I need a break to fix my stuff properly, and the Mall has proper resources," his deep, mechanical voice told me.

"Honestly, we should have raided the place before coming here. If you can hold off the infantry and Mandy can handle the magic, I could make something to finish this fight."

"OK, you know your stuff better than I do." Plus what I had been doing was not going to work. I just hoped Jerry had a better idea. xxxx xxxx A throng of zombies tumbled down the stairs to the Mall's upper floors, the fall causing them little harm. They crawled out of the mound of bodies by the dozens, then the hundreds, a wall of dead yet walking flesh seeking to devour the living.

Jerry's Mark III twin laser turrets gutted the unarmored opponents with ease, beams in the multi-kilowatt range that could melt through inches of steel both exploding and setting the rotting corpses on fire. Even with a helmet on the stench was absolutely horrible and unlike his friends the superpowered amateur roboticist had neither spells nor powers to block it.

"The SCBA module just got to the top of the upgrades list," the teenager muttered as he tore through the front of a hardware store with his armor's limbs. The turrets kept firing over his back even as he gathered everything from power drills to lawnmowers to a chainsaw and deposited them in a single huge pile. He didn't need to pay attention against enemies of this low caliber, the turrets designed specifically for fending off lighter attacks while he worked. But materials alone would not be enough.

Name: Jerry Norris, HP: 94/115, SP: 103/184, MP: 101/161 Class: lvl 23 Arcane Engineer Skills [2/7 pts] Academics lvl 4, Assessment lvl 14, Deception 2, Energize lvl 13, Energy Weapons lvl 10, Enhanced Armorer lvl 16, Enhanced Electrical Engineer lvl 13, Enhanced Roboticist lvl 13, Fabricate lvl 16, HEMA lvl 11, Instant Repair lvl 14, Language: English lvl 3, Language: French lvl 1, Persuasion lvl 5, Metal Creation lvl 9, Piloting: Battlesuit lvl 8, Programming lvl 7 Stats [30/115 pts] Strength 14, Dexterity 26, Constitution 20 Intelligence 50, Wisdom 24, Charisma 14 He'd gained more levels in less than five minutes of destroying undead monsters than he had in the entire three days before the big battle.

Part of it was the effect the invaders had in what he called the local "magic field". It wasn't a field both because it didn't have dimensions and because magic wasn't a force but that was the closest analogue he could think of. Magic based on violence was stronger under their influence, but that wasn't the only possibility. In fact, thematically opposing the invaders would weaken them at the cost of the invaders would weaken you. Under his huge armor, Jerry's face sported a genuine smile.

All systems had exploits, even illogical ones based on the users' beliefs. Especially those based on beliefs, because almost everyone believed they were right and deserved to win. The loophole he'd discovered as he fumbled blindly with his new powers, crushed in the aftermath of having to flee and leave Maya behind a week before, was about to pay off now. The zombies had been mostly purged, which meant it was time to get to work. All his stat points went into Intelligence, raising it to eighty.

This wouldn't increase his mana or mana recovery, but it would make all his mental skills both more powerful and more efficient, allowing for better results with fewer uses. Far more importantly, it let him use all those skills better. His mental processing became faster, his ability to visualize things accurately expanded, his pattern recognition and mental calculation improved.

Already, he could see where his armor could be improved; stronger servos with less friction, power systems with higher output and less overheating, armor with better deflection angles and spalling prevention and so on and so forth. Things that genius engineers could come up with in decades done in minutes, at least mentally.

'Fabricate' tore into the piles of resources, repurposing engines into servos, cabling and heavy duty electronics into power systems, the high-grade alloys of drills and jackhammers into armor plating, artificial diamond into optics and cooling surfaces.

'Metal Creation' provided the raw materials for the bulk of the upgrades, the frames and structural support; it had leveled up enough that it could provide steel alloys stronger than titanium - or actual titanium alloys where he needed to save weight. He spent his two hard-earned skill points to get two things he lacked; Fuel Creation and Ceramics Creation. With his Intelligence so high the new skills were strong enough to be of use even at level one and they would become even more useful in the future.

"Fuel" and "ceramics" were incredibly broad categories, after all. As he worked, the loophole he'd found kicked in; to build technology one consumed resources. Natural materials were essentially destroyed, invariably in violent ways, to make new things. He was also destroying mundane and peaceful tools to make weapons, instruments of violence forged by his own mind and powers to bring down his enemies.

In that his abilities were perfectly aligned with the invaders' purpose; he even used metal, fire and lightning as they did. But the invaders manifested the same theme both he and they used to create undead, demons and supernatural disasters, works many would find unnatural. He used that same magic to produce and enhance perfectly natural, physical weaponry. Their applications of the power were diametrically opposed. Thus his magic was both empowered by the enemy and opposed and weakened the enemy in turn.

Perhaps the enemy had never considered someone could base their works on the same themes yet oppose them in application and goals. Maybe the world they came from had never seen advanced technology and nobody had the chance to apply contradictory concepts against them before. As the remains of his cannon were reforged and added to his rapidly improving suit, Jerry the Arcane Engineer got closer and closer to showing those alien magical scrubs what proper magitech could do.

He only hoped the girls could hold the line until he was ready.