City of Sin (Yanyu Jiangnan)

Larger Enemies

Macy was eventually snapped out of her thoughts when she realised there were no more flesh warriors to process. Richard snapped the case holding them all shut, smiling as he sent his blue flames into the corpses to burn them all down. Grabbing the tiny amount of silvery metal that this process left behind, he chuckled, “Good haul.”

“What are these things?” Macy asked curiously as he put his vial and case back into his bracelet.

“The stuff you took out should be the power source for their beam weapons. It’s pretty unstable, but there’s a ton of energy within that we might be able to use in the future. I’m not sure what the other bit is, but I feel like it’s a core of some sort.”

This explanation was a little vague and confusing, but Richard didn’t intend to elaborate. Allowing Macy to recover for a while, he then led her deeper into reaper territory even as he cleared out the detectors along the way.

The second wave of reapers was much less troublesome than the first. Richard defeated them quickly enough for Macy to only suffer slight injuries, and this time she even managed to kill thirty flesh warriors and a few of the smallest warplanes. She felt a little proud of herself at the achievement, but knowing that Richard still had to save her multiple times she got down to the process of collecting the energy cores once more. It was at this point that she started feeling the unstable power within the glowing metal, the energy so concentrated that she shied away from it instinctively.

The two continued moving forward, but this time they wound up with the misfortune to face a troop that had one of the larger ships with powerful beam attacks.

Richard immediately had Macy focus on defence only, running around as fast as she could while condensing mirrors to deflect the beam attacks. She finally got used to the process, growing able to condense a mirror immediately whenever she felt danger, but even with this saving her life multiple times there were still many close calls. The worst of it all came when a beam from the large plane shot past her scalp, leaving her heart frozen for a moment as she saw just how close death had come.

It was at the same moment that she saw Richard blink right towards the large warship, merging hundreds of the energy cores and throwing them over. A trace of blue fire caused a deafening explosion in moments, the shockwaves from the attacks blowing the reapers apart and even dropping the distant Macy to the ground. The large warship was completely missing by the time the blaze calmed down, with most of the others gone as well.

Feeling an intense bout of dizziness, Macy forced herself to her feet and staggered forward. Her sword moved to shatter a few of the tiny machines that fell next to her, and she then pounced onto a larger one that was ten metres away. The machine buzzed ominously even as she cut it apart, popping a number of gun barrels that it pointed at her face, but she screamed and struck it wildly until they were all cut apart. Even then she continued attacking crazily, only stopped when a hand grabbed her own and left her unable to move.

“I still have a use for these things, you know!” Richard grumbled as he saw her regain her calm, “Here I was, thinking you were doing alright with timing. Maybe I was wrong.”

“Umm…” Macy blushed at this evaluation, just burying her head down without any idea what to say.

Richard shook his head and sighed, “We used up too much of the energy cores, there’s almost nothing else. Need to adjust… No no no, that’s enough from you. Focus on healing yourself, I’ll clear the battlefield.”

Stopped from going towards the flesh warriors, Macy nodded and took out a few healing salves, but she suddenly realised that she would need to expose herself completely to clean her wounds. This left her hesitant for a few moments, but she quickly decided that it didn’t matter and took everything off to start cleaning up.

For his part, Richard made no move to avoid looking at her, quickly clearing up the battlefield before sitting down and staring at her clean her wounds. With her entire body visible, the same woman who always told him to go through with it suddenly felt herself growing a little uncomfortable.

Eventually, she couldn’t take it and gritted her teeth, “If you want to do it, make it quick!”

Richard chuckled and shook his head, “Imagine my followers finding out I died because I got ambushed by reapers while having sex. No thanks.”

Macy was embarrassed and furious, but she decided to just ignore him completely and focus on her wounds. She tuned him out completely until her clothes were back on, at which point she turned to ask, “Where next?”

Muttering to himself for a moment, he eventually stood up, “Forward.”

As they started walking, Richard secretly lifted a corner of his robes up and looked inside. There was a large burn on his chest from the large warship, a price he had paid for his sudden attack. Such a wound was normally negligible, but the energy beam contained some sort of poisonous element to it that stopped him from regenerating on his own. Unfortunately, he had blown that warship to smithereens and there was no way for him to study the source for a solution.

They walked for half an hour before coming to a stop. Richard estimated that it would be a half hour more for the next wave to arrive, but while he could battle right away Macy was still exhausted and needed some rest. Taking out a box of the energy cores, he tied them together in bundles of ten and placed them back into the case.

The next encounter was rather quick, with Richard taking mere minutes to destroy the entire army. However, he suffered three beam attacks just so he could leave some of the large warship intact, leaving him far from in optimal condition. Macy was heavily injured as well, losing that ability to fight.

Once he’d cleared the battlefield again, Richard detected an increase in the number of detection waves. It felt like a pack of wolves surrounding their prey, and it left him hesitant. He could still fight for now, but Macy definitely could not. It would be fine if there weren’t any of the large warships amongst the enemy, but otherwise he would have to flee.

In the end, he decided to take her out of reaper territory until she recovered. He allowed her to fly herself at first, but any hint of calmness suddenly disappeared and he grabbed her by the arm, teleporting repeatedly until he was back at the messenger and they could leave.