While Braun may feel no fear, this doesn’t make the fight any less harder.
As the most fearsome, and probably the second strongest figure Braun has ever encountered, the man capable of controlling cards took a step forward. His hand was stretched out, with a card slid right between his index and middle finger.
Waving his hand, cards soared out of the skintight black suit in his body, covering Braun’s entire vision. They expanded out like a tsunami devouring the land, with the whole abandoned warehouse sealed inside a prison of cards.
“What kinda bullshit is this?” he mumbled yet a grin remained on his face. Threads wrapped around his whole body, causing his own physical strength and the thread’s strength to combine and soar.
“Just as I suspected… He’s Level 2,” the one wielding cards mumbled, his voice full of surprise.
“He’s Level 2?” the winged girl asked, also surprised by the fact that Braun was ‘Level 2’, whatever that term meant. “Didn’t they say he was only Level 1?”
“Take them with a grain of salt, they’re not always right,” said the man. He then grinned, sealing the entrance behind him.
“Why did you cage the whole place?” Barrier Guy asked.
“It’s a secret.” The man pressed his finger to where his lips should be on his helmet.
“He definitely has a goal here,” said Clone Woman.
“Just fight him all at once, but don’t hurt him too much. I’ll take care of any accidents.” The man waved their arms.
“If you say so.” Clone Woman shrugged her shoulders.
“Heh, this is going to be fun! Look at him, he’s practically ready to fight!” the large muscular man slammed his fists against one another, causing a sound similar to rock smashing against rock.
Without waiting for his other teammates, the large muscular rushed forward, his footsteps loud and heavy.
Braun squinted his glowing green eyes and distanced himself away from the Hard Guy.
Threads erupted out of his fingertips and were swung like whips, lashing right against the Hard Guy’s durable body. Sparks formed at the points of impact, with the man barely receiving damage.
“Hmph!” They snorted and pulled back their fist, arriving right in front of Braun, ready to deal a devastating punch.
Braun simply planted his foot deep into the ground, with his hand pulled back. Threads gathered around his fist, increasing the size of his arm.
Meeting the muscular man’s punch with one of his own, a loud boom echoed, and both parties were pushed back.
This appeared to have surprised everyone else on the team, as if having the same level of strength as the muscular man was a shocking feat, and it truly was.
The punch the two threw out was at the level capable of sending cars a couple of meters away, showcasing just how vastly strong their strength was.
Before Braun could recover from the clash of their fists, the clone girl activated her power and conjured five different clones of herself, each wielding a futuristic laser gun.
Pressing their triggers in tandem, six beams of light came flying in from different directions, with their direction crisscrossing into one another. Using her experience and intellect, she gave Braun little chance of dodging, but was Braun a normal man?
He hopped into the air and twisted his body in a strange way. Using the threads covering his body to push his limbs into the position he wanted, he appeared like a strangely shaped human figure, barely dodging the onslaught of light that came his way.
As he remained in the air, a spherical barrier abruptly formed around his falling figure, trapping him inside in the process.
The Barrier Guy in the distance, with hand extended out into the air toward Braun’s direction, clenched his hand into a fist. Responding to his closing fist, the barrier gradually became smaller, and would soon crush Braun’s body into a bloody paste.
“Hmph!” Braun grunted and the threads surrounding his body exploded out, forming a ball of threads that collided with the increasingly small sphere.
Barrier Guy’s eyes lit up as he exerted more of his strength, but Braun responded back by forming more threads to resist the closing ball. Then, while inside the ball of threads and barrier, more threads formed from his fingertips, forming a sharp tentacle-like mass of threads.
A small opening formed on the sphere of threads where the silvery tentacle pierced through, poking through the barrier in one go.
“What?” The Barrier Guy gasped, shocked to see his barrier being pierced through so casually.
While it may not be his full strength, the piercing prowess of that tentacle was truly terrifying.
“Got you now!” The raven-winged woman shouted as she flapped her wings, leaping into the air with a gust of wind sweeping the dust on the ground.
She homed in on the unraveling sphere of threads where Braun glanced at her, his eyes full of mockery.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
The woman’s hands transformed into dark gray claws, with strength far more monstrous than even the muscular man from before, and sharpness capable of cutting through metal like it’s butter.
She swung both of her hands to form an x, but Braun simply manipulated the formless mass of threads around him, causing hundreds of deadly threads to shoot forward.
Each thread was akin to a deadly needle, with hundreds of them piercing straight through the winged woman’s body. Sharp pain flooded her mind, but her monstrous regeneration quickly caused her flesh to heal, with the blood leaking out of her pierced skin to disappear in the blink of an eye.
This was enough for Braun though, as he finally found the opening he was looking for.
The threads pulled back into his hand, and the woman watched helplessly as Braun grabbed her by the neck, his hands covered by the same silvery threads that pierced through her body.
Clone Woman and her clones, each preparing to fire another round of lasers, stopped their action upon seeing Braun use the winged woman as a human meatshield, forcing her to stop shooting or else his hostage would end up getting hurt in the process.
“Oh damn!” The muscular man remarked in the distance, amazed by the twist of events. “He turned the tables on us real quick!”
The Card Guy watching from the far back hissed at Braun’s ruthlessness, and softly praised, “This guy has sharp combat instinct.”
“And to think he’s a natural Level 2 super, maybe I can finally retire at the ripe age of 35 if things go right,” he wistfully murmured.
As the winged woman remained powerless under Braun’s tight grip, the muscular man once again rushed forward, while Barrier Guy activated his ability once more, constructing a barrier that formed right around Braun’s legs, binding him to the ground.
He clicked his tongue and he willed some of the threads around his legs to instead gather around his left arm. His arm rapidly expanded in size, growing three times its original form.
Watching the muscular man arrive right in front of him again for a fiercer clash, he snickered and sent a punch forward.
The muscular man smirked and his whole body increased in size, his skin turning jagged and rough. Power flowed from his muscles, causing his strength to skyrocket in an instant.
However, unlike his expectations, Braun’s giant silvery fist detangled, transforming into a mass of threads, each sharper than the greatest of mortal blades, each capable of piercing through boulders like they were paper.
Then, with a single thought, the threads regathered, covering a majority of the muscular man’s body like a spider covering its prey in its webs so that it couldn’t move.
After that, his right hand extended out like some formless limb, and as if using the winged woman’s body as some bludgeoning weapon, slammed her against the muscular man.
The two shot towards Barrier Guy, who hurriedly released the barriers around Braun’s legs to form a rectangular barrier in front of him.
Throughout this whole ordeal, only five seconds had passed, showcasing just how quickly events flowed in such a seemingly simple yet complex battle.
In a fight against nine enemies, three of which possessed diverse abilities and the other six being the carbon copy of a master martial artist and skilled combatant, Braun’s mind rapidly adapted and he followed the most optimal path to victory.
Braun crouched down and madly ran forward, his figure appearing as a blur. His thread-covered body, alongside his own physical attributes, caused his speed to be amplified beyond the limits of humanity.
Appearing as a shadowy blur to the naked eye, he reappeared right behind Barrier Guy, his eyes filled to the brim with killing intent.
Strength rivaling Terry, combat instincts surpassing Nora, threads surpassing Kaya’s claws in terms of sharpness, defense a fraction of Jonas’ barriers, and even speed comparable to an average beast-transforming Level 2 Super…
This guy, he’s almost unbeatable when facing against a normal Level 2 Super! He can fight at close range with monstrous strength and great agility, or do long-range combat with his deadly threads that can act as formless swords or form various constructs.
He’s a jack of all trades and a potential master of all!
While the Card Guy was busy evaluating Braun’s specs, Jonas, the Barrier Guy, received a ruthless attack from the back. Even though numerous layers of barriers formed behind him just in the nick of time, Braun’s punch broke through them like glass, arriving at his back in one swift go.
Luckily, the force of impact was heavily dampened down by the time it arrived, causing his body to fly off but not break.
Now all alone was Clone Woman—Nora.
She no longer hesitated and summoned all of her clones, splitting her figure into eleven different entities, each having the same appearance. They took out a strange item from their pockets, which then transformed into different weapons, most of which were guns.
Four of them rushed in four different directions, each wielding a deadly weapon.
Braun, however, simply stood still, with the threads around his body exploding out like a porcupine’s spikes, albeit much longer and deadlier. They pierced through the clones’ bodies, killing them in one go.
This gave Nora an opening though, with beams and flames bombarding Braun in an instant, with futuristic bombs even being used, causing a loud explosion to erupt.
Huddled inside his porcupine-like shield, Braun withstood the attacks and retracted all of the extended threads in an instant. Then, with a deep breath and a ruthless light shining in his eyes, a long silvery whip burst out of his hand.
He spun at the heel of his foot, with the whip spinning in a large circular motion in the process. The heads of the remaining clones fell to the ground one by one, with the last remaining Nora about to be decapitated.
“That’s enough.” A cold voice echoed and a card suddenly appeared between Nora’s neck and the flying whip, stopping Braun from beheading the original Nora.
Braun felt a threatening aura from the far distance and he focused on the figure slowly walking towards him, with cards flying around their body to form rings.
“I was surprised to encounter a Level 2 Super, much less a genius like you.” The man’s voice was practically jumping with joy, with the rotation of the orbiting cards around his body speeding up.
“In the realm of Level 2, you have the potential to become truly unrivaled as long as you develop your abilities, but remember this lesson well.” The man raised their arm, with a couple of cards halting in place.
“No matter how strong you may be as a Level 2, you’ll never be able to match a Level 3!”
A couple of cards flicked through the air at breakneck speeds, with the air whooshing in their paths. Just as he heard the sound of the wind in his ears, the cards already arrived right in front of him, causing Braun to reveal a truly surprised look.
Almost at the speed of sound…
The cards cut straight through his defense, destroying dense layers of threads to cut deep gashes on both of his arms, where his bones were revealed. A burst of pain clouded his mind for a moment before the pain abruptly disappeared, leaving behind a calm and cool rationality.
He, however, acted as if he was truly in pain, with a loud cry and a blood-curdling scream. If one looked closely, they’d see his flesh was already squirming, full of vitality, but he willed his body to stop regenerating so as to not break his cover.
Falling to the ground, another card blitzed through the air at speeds comparable to a speeding bullet, but this time, instead of the edge ramming against Braun, it was the flat side of the card.
With a loud thud, Braun fell to his back, knocked unconscious in one strike.
Taking out a green syringe from his pocket, the man chuckled helplessly and walked forward, while murmuring, “You better not say no, you genius. You’re my way out of this job!”