Chương 77: 76: The Ambush

Zeinai abandoned the direct assault and ducked behind a shattered office block. His palm struck the display on his wrist. HOLOGRAPHIC COMBAT SYSTEM OUTPUT: 100 UNITS APIS EXCHANGE: ENABLED REINFORCED STEEL"Deploy." The air fractured. A hundred Zeinais stepped into existence, each forged from hardlight reinforced with Apis, tougher than steel and armed with a different weapon. Tokyo's panic exploded.

Cars screeched to a halt, drivers fled, and pedestrians scattered as the real Zeinai slipped unnoticed into a side street. Wormholes snapped open beneath the constructs, launching them across rooftops, highways, and intersections. They converged on Dweller from every direction beneath a storm of blades and crushing weapons. The Dweller answered with a single step. A palm brushed one sword aside into another construct's spear before three chain punches blasted through three hardlight chests in one deafening impact.

The holes sealed immediately as fresh constructs replaced the fallen. He flowed through the assault like water, rebounding off storefronts, vaulting across cars, and using lamp posts as pivots. Every movement evaded, redirected, and countered simultaneously. Several streets away, Zeinai sprinted toward the next intersection. A young man instinctively shielded his trembling girlfriend.

"P-Please!"

"Don't kill us!" Their eyes widened as he thundered closer.

"H-He's so tall..."

"Monster..." Without breaking stride, Zeinai opened a wormhole beneath them. They vanished, reappearing safely inside a subway station blocks away before either understood what had happened. The pursuit intensified. The Dweller bounded across rooftops while wormholes constantly dropped fresh constructs into his path. They burst through apartments, leapt over traffic, and crashed through office buildings from impossible angles, refusing to let him breathe. He reached into his coat.

Six black shuriken flashed into the air, each already saturated with Gloom. They split again and again until dozens filled the sky. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Black explosions engulfed entire intersections, blasting craters through the leading constructs and tearing limbs from their bodies. The survivors kept coming. Fresh Apis surged through the constructs, rebuilding every shattered frame before they could fall.... The Dweller glanced up. The sky was full of descending Zeinais. Before he could move, reality folded.

A deafening metallic shriek tore through the air as something impossible burst into existence above him. A full Shinkansen. Steel screamed. Windows rattled. Thousands of tonnes of white-and-blue bullet train materialized from nothing, already in motion. A copy had both hands buried beneath its frame, muscles straining as he swung the entire train sideways like a club. The impact never came. The Dweller exhaled. His feet settled into stance. A wakizashi slipped free with a whisper. SHIIIIING. One effortless draw.

The blade traced a single vertical line through the air. Silence. The train continued moving. For half a heartbeat. A razor-thin seam appeared from its nose to its final carriage. Metal groaned. Glass fractured all at once. The entire bullet train split perfectly down the middle, each half peeling away from the other as though reality itself had been unzipped. KRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAASH! Both halves thundered past him, crashing into opposite sides of the city. Buildings disappeared beneath avalanches of steel.

Towers folded. Concrete erupted into clouds that climbed hundreds of metres into the sky as twisted tracks, shattered carriages and rivers of sparks rained across the district. The Dweller slowly lowered his sword. Not a single strand of hair had moved. From across the battlefield, Zeinai watched in stunned silence. His visor replayed the draw frame by frame. Realisation struck him. He'd been a swordsman long before he'd become… whatever he is now. That train had been cleaved by pure skill. The Dweller moved again.

One descending Zeinai reached him. He planted a foot against the hologram's chest. It burst into shimmering light beneath the kick, its body becoming nothing more than a stepping stone. His momentum carried him into a graceful flip before his heel crashed into the face of the next hologram. THOOM! That one exploded into glittering fragments as well. He rebounded again, flowing effortlessly from one false body to the next, each illusion serving as another foothold beneath his feet.

He vaulted a twelve-story building. Several intercepted him midair. A spear shot for his throat. He slipped outside its line, trapped the shaft beneath his arm, and twisted, sending its wielder crashing into another construct. A chain snapped toward his ankle. He rolled onto it, sprinted along its length, then drove a heel kick through another construct before rebounding off its shoulder. An axe swept for his ribs.

A short Wing Chun elbow broke its path as both palms shoved another construct away, launching him back into open air. The swarm closed again. A sword. A shield. Twin batons. He threaded the impossibly narrow gap between them, his coat barely brushing steel before a spinning crescent kick hurled two constructs through a towering billboard. Another wormhole opened. Fresh Zeinais emerged before he'd even landed. An escrima wielder unleashed a blur of strikes.

The Dweller flowed between them, slipping through blind spots until constructs collided with one another. They kept coming. Chains snared his wrist and ankle. He spun with them, dragging four constructs together before hurling the group through the glass roof of a cinema. People screamed. Popcorn flew as the audience stampeded for the exits.

"Why are those huge men chasing that woman?!"

"I think that's a man!" Nobody stayed long enough to find out. The entire audience bolted for the exits as the fight tore across the theater. The Dweller sprinted along the backs of theater seats without disturbing a single person while hardlight soldiers tore through rows behind him. A Wakizashi slid into his hand. Steel whispered. Heads fell. Bodies split apart. Limbs separated before their owners realized they'd been cut.

He spun beneath a spear, vaulted off a wall, corkscrewed through the air, and kicked two constructs through the projection screen before rebounding into another slash that felled three more in one fluid motion. Four constructs finally caught him, seized his limbs, and swung him toward the fleeing crowd. He planted both hands on the floor before impact, folded over himself, and snapped out a scissor kick that blasted two constructs away.

He sprang upright without touching a single civilian, converted the motion into a handspring, and launched another construct through the projector room. From another rooftop, the real Zeinai watched in utter disbelief. He wasn't analysing a martial artist anymore. He was watching a ballerina, a circus performer and an acrobat fused into one impossible body. Enforcers trained flips. This wasn't that. Every movement flowed into the next with effortless grace, so fluid it scarcely looked human.

For a ridiculous moment, Zeinai could genuinely imagine the man leaping through a flaming hoop before a cheering audience without missing a beat. Even while tearing through holograms, there wasn't a hint of wasted motion, only perfect balance and complete control. — The floor burst apart. A construct seized the Dweller's ankle and dragged him underground as dozens more poured into the tunnel. He touched the concrete with two fingers. Tap. The ground rippled like water.

Every construct touching it shattered at once, dissolving into yellow fragments. He leapt free, only for a wormhole to swallow him. He emerged straight into a waiting punch that crashed into his abdomen, launching him across another city block. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. THOOM. — Hidden deep within the maze of streets, the real Zeinai watched through his HUD. Every exchange mapped his habits. Every dodge refined predictions.

Every block narrowed future possibilities. Constructs fell. He simply made more. They were never meant to win. They were meant to wear him down. Several fleeing civilians stumbled into Zeinai's path. They looked up, froze at the sight of the towering armored giant, then screamed.

"R-Run!"

"It's the big one!"

"He'll kill us!" Before panic could carry them any farther, wormholes opened beneath their feet, swallowing them and depositing them safely several streets away. Zeinai closed his fingers around a tiny Cognizine injector. The army was only buying him the opening the needle needed. Constructs filled every angle. Some flew between rooftops, others sprinted along vertical walls while wormholes continually dropped fresh attackers into Paris's path. Below, civilians fled in blind panic.

Most couldn't even see the fight anymore, only the shockwaves shattering windows and collapsing buildings. Whenever someone was caught in the destruction, a wormhole whisked them safely away. The Dweller and the constructs crashed through a restaurant. Tables exploded into splinters. Plates burst apart. Chefs and diners dove for cover as he vaulted the counter. His Wakizashi met a sword with a metallic crack that ripped the building apart before the fight spilled back into the street.

Block after block crumbled behind them. Zeinai caught it all through the exchange. Streets softened beneath their footwork. Pressure waves carved corridors through the clouds high above. Satellites began flagging the battle as impossible seismic activity, while power grids across Tokyo flickered under the electromagnetic chaos unleashed by each Apis exchange. They burst back into the open.

Constructs sprinted sideways across skyscrapers, kicked off glass, and converged on him from impossible angles while others ignited their vibrating feathers and hurled themselves through the air like guided missiles. Hundreds of civilians surrounded the ruined streets, some fleeing, others frozen, others filming what they believed they were witnessing. The Dweller never slowed. He rebounded from walls and office towers in one seamless flow, slipping between hardlight weapons before landing in an alley.

As he rounded the corner, a construct met him with a waiting minigun. The barrels roared. Relativistic rounds flooded the street. He leapt onto the bullets themselves, each step impossibly precise, flipped over the barrage, and drove a spinning heel kick through the construct's neck. Its head spun away. He landed outside just as a helicopter swept overhead. The side door slid open. Five Zeinais opened fire. RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT. Halfway across the city, the real Zeinai poured more Apis into the network.

Output increased. The constructs now moved hundreds of times faster than light. Lacking true mass, they accelerated effortlessly while every blow still struck with catastrophic force. The Dweller inhaled. His arms became flowing circles, brushing every bullet aside with microscopic precision. The redirected rounds curved back through the battlefield, ripping apart advancing constructs. The gunfire multiplied.

For one impossible instant, bullets converged from every direction as the constructs encircled him like a firing squad. Paris drew his Wakizashi in one clean motion, slicing every round apart before it reached him. He disappeared. The battlefield seemed to lag. Everything froze for a heartbeat before the delayed impacts caught up, and dozens of constructs burst into harmless orange motes. Fresh ones replaced them. Zeinai poured more Apis into the network.

Free of true mass, the constructs accelerated beyond logic, no longer traveling so much as simply arriving. They flickered around him from impossible angles. He answered with Taekwondo.... A spinning hook kick took one head. He rebounded off another into a tornado kick that shattered three more, landed in an axe kick, then spun straight into a back kick that folded another construct in half, every movement flowing seamlessly into the next. A launcher fired. A reinforced capture net erupted toward him.

One slash cut it apart. Another construct was already there. One finally struck his jaw. THOOM. The shockwave ripped through multiple city blocks, shearing buildings apart, shattering every window in its path, and folding streets beneath the pressure before it finally bled away into the skyline.

He turned with the impact, let the momentum flow through him, caught the construct's arm, flipped over its shoulder, trapped its neck between his legs, twisted, then used the spin to hurl it into a wave of charging constructs. Tank constructs rolled onto the avenue, cannons already firing. He brushed the first shell aside with the flat of his Wakizashi.

It screamed past him and consumed an entire city block in a sun-bright explosion, buildings folding into the fireball as streets ruptured and a towering wall of flame climbed into the sky. The remaining shells closed in. He didn't evade. He relaxed. His body aligned so perfectly with the pavement that he slipped into it as though it were water. The shells thundered overhead. A moment later he emerged beneath the tanks, laid a hand against one, and the same effect spread through the entire formation.

Steel lost its solidity. One by one, the constructs sank through the street until nothing remained. Watching through his HUD, Zeinai's eyes widened.... What technique was that? The chase continued. — Zeinai repositioned through a wormhole and scanned the city. His HUD flooded with thousands of life signs. People were still running, screaming, trapped between collapsing streets and shockwaves. He sighed.

"… Sphinx." She'd stolen his spare. His hand settled on the last desync disc at his belt. Originally calibrated to induce madness, he thumbed through its settings until the output shifted. STATUS EFFECT: UNCONSCIOUSNESS. He threw it. The disc struck the pavement. WHUM. A silent pulse expanded across the city in an instant. Every civilian, every police officer, every dog, bird, insect, and living creature collapsed where they stood, consciousness switched off without pain or resistance.

Wormholes blossomed across Tokyo. Thousands opened simultaneously beneath the sleeping bodies, swallowing them in waves before depositing them safely beyond the battlefield. Within moments, the streets were empty. Only the Dweller...... and the hundred Zeinais remained. — Then the Dweller saw him. One hundred and fifty meters away, the real Zeinai stood in the middle of the street, bat resting across one shoulder as wormholes shimmered behind him. The constructs had only been buying time.

He had found the puppeteer. He accelerated straight toward Zeinai. Zeinai's visor lit up. OUTPUT: 100 → 1, 000. A thousand hardlight operatives flooded the streets. Still he came. Zeinai increased it again. OUTPUT: 10, 000. For one brief moment, Tokyo disappeared beneath an ocean of armored giants pouring from rooftops, wormholes, and shattered buildings. Every street, intersection, and rooftop filled with Zeinais converging at once. The Dweller flickered. One shuriken left his hand. It split into a hundred.

Then a thousand. A silver storm erupted through the swarm, detonating construct after construct into clouds of orange-yellow hardlight. Before the fragments had finished scattering, he was already among the survivors. He lunged once. The wakizashi flashed. The Dweller crossed the battlefield in a single uninterrupted motion. Silence. A heartbeat passed. Shink. Shink-shink-shink-shink. The sounds finally caught up. Thin lines spread across every construct.

Dozens of perfectly clean cuts opened through flesh and armour alike before entire bodies slipped apart in neat sections, thousands collapsing into fading motes of light. Watching through his visor, Zeinai finally nodded. It was time. With a growl, he slammed a disc into the street. A real gravity mine. WHUM. Gravity collapsed. Roads folded. Towers bent inward. Cars crumpled into twisted metal as everything within hundreds of meters was dragged toward the epicenter.

Anything caught inside should've been reduced to paste. The Dweller simply surrendered. His body relaxed. His breathing slowed. He became one with the collapsing frequency until the gravity no longer recognized him as something separate. It flowed through him instead of crushing him. The field ended.... They burst back into the open. Store alarms screamed. Seconds later they were on the highway, traffic erupting into panic. The Dweller flipped cleanly over a car. A flash. The empty vehicle rocketed toward Zeinai.

He caught it, leapt, and smashed it into the highway hard enough to crater the asphalt. KRASHHHH. No one was there. THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD. A barrage of chain punches detonated across his torso and jaw before his HUD finished recalculating. Each strike flowed seamlessly into the next, the final blow blasting him through guardrails and carving a smoking trench the length of the highway. Zeinai disappeared into a wormhole. PREDICTIVE MODEL: NEXT APPEARANCE ACQUIRED.

He erupted from another portal, his bat already swinging. The Dweller met it with a single wave of his hands. The strike glanced away. KRAAAK! The bat crashed into the ground instead. The city split open like a cracked coconut. A fault line raced across the landmass faster than sight, mountains shearing apart as the earth opened from horizon to horizon. TECTONIC FRACTURE DETECTED. JAPAN: STRUCTURAL FAILURE IN PROGRESS. ESTIMATED SPLIT LENGTH: GROWING. Zeinai gritted his teeth. Fortunately...

The bat had been designed for this. Any swing it made remained reversible with Apis for the next three seconds, a built-in failsafe engineered to prevent catastrophic collateral damage from a deflected strike. He flicked a finger. ZZZT. The bat revoked its last exchange. The swing unraveled. The country stitched itself back together, the fault line collapsing into nothing until the land stood whole again, as though the impact had never happened. A spinning back kick crashed into the back of Zeinai's head.

Before the first impact had even finished, another kick slammed into his face. It felt like two different people had struck him at once. There was only one. BOOM- THOOM. The force reverberated through his skull. His Apis dispersed most of it, but the singular signature of the same strike arriving from two opposite directions at virtually the same instant made the dispersion field stutter for the briefest fraction of a second. Zeinai coughed blood into his mask.

It felt like someone had smashed the back of his head with a sack of bricks. The shockwave ripped through the city. Zeinai roared. His entire body twisted backward, the bat sweeping in a furious arc. WHOOOOOOM! Compressed air screamed from the swing. Crescent-shaped blades erupted across the skyline, slicing through towers as though they were paper. Skyscrapers split cleanly in half before slowly sliding away from themselves, glass and steel cascading into the streets below. The Dweller stepped into the storm.

A hip strike crashed toward him. He slipped outside it by a fraction. The bat followed instantly. Its head blurred toward his neck with enough force to erase everything behind it. SHIIING! The wakizashi met it. Zeinai expected the blade to snap. Or the force behind the bat to shear straight through sword and man alike. Instead... The Dweller's wrist turned. A tiny circle. Barely visible.

The bat slid along the edge instead of colliding head-on, the impossible force redirected across the polished steel with a ringing shriek that made sparks pour into the rain. His blade never yielded. It guided. The bat flew harmlessly past his shoulder. Zeinai's eyes widened. He reversed the swing immediately. The bat vanished behind his back, rolled around his wrist and reappeared from beneath his arm.

A feint became an upward smash before twisting into a horizontal sweep, changing direction three times in less than a heartbeat. The Dweller answered each one. Shing. Shing. Shing. The wakizashi flashed like silver rain. Its edge kissed the bat again and again, each touch shaving the attack away before it could fully form. Every deflection was only a few centimetres, yet somehow enough. Zeinai refused to stop.

The bat spun around his shoulders, disappeared behind his back, dropped beneath one leg before whipping upward in a brutal uppercut. He let go entirely, allowing the weapon to rotate through the air before catching it with the opposite hand mid-spin, its trajectory changing without warning. The Dweller's feet glided across the ground. One step. Half a turn. A wrist rotation. Steel whispered. Every impossible angle met empty space by the width of a fingernail. The exchange became too fast for ordinary eyes.

Only showers of sparks and ringing steel remained visible as the bat and wakizashi crossed hundreds of times each second. Zeinai suddenly broke away. His boots gouged trenches through the rooftop as he slid backwards, the bat snapping open once more. Interlocking plates unfolded around its head, exposing the blinding white core buried within. TARGET LOCK. He aimed. This ends now. The trigger depressed. A pillar of incandescent Apis erupted from the weapon, swallowing the space between them in an instant.

It was dream made tangible, so densely saturated that even the finest enchanted steel would've melted the moment it touched it. Nothing should've been capable of resisting it. The Dweller didn't move. His eyes closed. His breathing settled. For the briefest instant, he seemed to drift somewhere beyond the battlefield. The wakizashi rose. One perfect draw. SHIIIIIIING! The blade met the beam. And split it.

The impossible ray peeled apart into two incandescent streams that screamed past either side of him before vanishing into the city beyond. BOOOOOOOOOOOM! Twin suns bloomed across the skyline. Districts disappeared beneath white fire. Towers folded inward before melting into nothingness, while others collapsed into unrecognisable masses of fused stone, molten glass and warped metal.

Whole sections of the skyline simply ceased to exist, leaving only smeared stains of impossible colour hanging in the atmosphere, as though reality had been a drawing clumsily scrubbed with an eraser, its pigments refusing to disappear completely. The shockwave rolled back moments later, flattening everything still left standing. Zeinai stared. His visor confirmed exactly what he'd seen, yet his mind refused to accept it. He... cut it. No. He'd done something far stranger.

For a single instant, the Dweller had forced himself into a dream, aligning his own existence with the logic of Apis itself. Inside that state, the beam had ceased being an impossible construct and become something with form. Something that could be cut. Understanding and skill. Both were required. The revelation stunned Zeinai for only a fraction of a second. A heel crashed into the side of his head. KOOM.

The next thing Zeinai knew, he was blasting through skyscrapers again, pulverizing offices and apartments before skidding across the face of another tower, his visor filling with a giant billboard. Another impact. THOOM. He launched so violently that he didn't even realize how high he'd been sent until a passenger jet passed beneath him. The Dweller appeared overhead, calmly falling toward him. Zeinai blinked. BOOOOOOM. He was already buried in another crater. Explosions echoed across the city. Sirens wailed.

One of his visor lenses had shattered. A jagged shard dug into his left eye. He ignored it. If he won, he would take the Dweller's magic, stabilize it into a device, reverse the last fifteen seconds, and erase every witness, every recording, every memory of this battle. If he lost, the Dweller would likely do the same. Either way...... this moment would never have happened.