The last time I had used my shield portal, back on the plains in the neutral realm, I had folded it up and placed it back in my Pocket Dimension out of habit. Which I was making a specific note now to break that habit, as it would take me seconds to pull it out and equip it, where it would be equipped instantly if it were in my inventory.

The ice launchers had all begun firing and from fifty meters away I had less than a sixth of a second to do something. Nowhere near enough time to get my shield out. The trajectories of the shards were all in a horizontal plane coming towards me, and would cut me apart from my hips to my shoulders. Which left me with two options, go over or go under.

Under would keep me in contact with the ground, so I could change the direction I was moving, but would allow them to move their line of fire a short distance down to get me. Over would limit my movement for a few seconds, but it would be harder for them to pin me down. And it would give me a clear view to counterattack, which is what made me choose it.

I leapt hard vertically from both feet using the entire energy in the muscles of my legs, I would be able to recover enough in the few seconds I was in the air to catch myself when I landed. I had to tuck my knees up in front of me to get my legs clear of the raging torrent of fire beneath me, and I threw the wisp I still had in my right hand up out of harm's way.

Tracking where I was going to land, it was less than ideal at ten meters in front of the closest ice launchers in just under two seconds time. I had begun moving my shield closer to the exit of my pocket portal, but it was going to take at least five seconds. I did have a heap of throwing blades in my inventory, and as I thought 'heap' I knew the exact number as one hundred and three, the inventory system feeding me the number.

Without Conor or Jenny using their ability I couldn't see the weak points of the snow men operating their weapons, but the weapons themselves had a pretty obvious weak point. The shards were launched from the tubes, damaging the tubes should break the weapons.

The throwing blades also wouldn't equip directly to my hands, not being considered permanent equipment, so I had to summon them from my inventory and take them out of my Bag of Holding. With the limited size of the bag's opening I chose to remove ten throwing blades to begin with. I moved my left hand quickly to the opening, using a full tenth of the energy in the muscles to pull the blades out and push them in front of me to be within easy reach for throwing, keeping one in my left hand and grabbing one out of the air with my right.

The ice launchers had begun tracking upwards to hit me in the air, and some were reacting faster than others. The fastest reacting one was at the end of the line to my left, and it was my first target. I threw the blade in my left hand to hit the tube of the launcher in the middle from the top, and lined up and threw four more blades at the next four quickest launchers. The first blade hit as I was throwing the sixth blade, and I watched as it sank through the tube.

The blade came to a stop after shearing through most of the tube completely blocking it, only the very top of the blade visible sticking out of the top.

The blade might have continued through the entire tube, but the ice launcher exploded at that point, sending shrapnel in all directions. Two guns to the right of the first gun ended up knocked over, and the next gun along from that stopped firing.

I was just throwing my seventh throwing blade, and I changed its target to a gun in the middle that would cause the most disruption to the firing line, and my three remaining blades to do the same at other points along the line.

The launchers began exploding in quick order after that. My third target, one of the larger tubes, was especially impressive disrupting what remained of the five guns on either side of it. The whole line stopped firing before my last three targets could explode, but so long as they'd stopped I considered it a success.

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My armour successfully stopped the several waves of shrapnel that made it to me, two meters up in the air and still twenty five meters away from the first of the guns. Most of the snow men that had been around the guns that had exploded were also collapsing into piles of snow.

"You look to have got them my lord," Jeff said. "When do you think you will be bringing us out to fight?"

"Our priority is stopping the snow man progenitor," I said. "We need to travel fast to be able to do that to save as much of the plains in the neutral realm as possible. Running into ambushes is an acceptable price to pay for being able to move so quickly, especially given that they weren't able to hurt me in any way-"

There was a crack of sound that followed an ice projectile hitting me in the chest, leaving a two centimeter hole through my heart and back.

I tracked the trajectory of the shot back and saw a snow man with a thin tube prone on the ground seven hundred meters away. The ice shard was travelling at around five hundred meters per second when it hit me, and I'd only been in the air for a second and a half. It was a damned good shot, I was impressed. Not that being shot through the heart would stop me. I loaded up my healing program and switched it to parallel mode, needing to be back up on my feet as soon as possible.

"My lord," Conor said, interrupting me just as I was about to launch the program. "There is a second projectile coming in, possibly higher than the first. The trajectory tracking isn't very good as your eyes can only just see it, but the estimate is that it is in line to hit your head."

He lit up the trajectory and it showed a range of possible lines from my chest to above my head. I could swing my legs out to the side, moving my body horizontal, and miss all of the predicted lines.

My body wasn't coping very well with my heart being so damaged and I had barely gotten it to move when the trajectory firmed up. The shard would have hit me between my eyebrows if I hadn't moved, but my head was the easiest thing to move and it was already out of the way.

With that out of the way I got an estimate for the time that it would take for my heart and chest to be repaired, three eighths of a second. And I would hit the ground in half a second. It wasn't going to be a pretty landing, but there wasn't much I could do about that.

"I'm going to be out of it for a bit," I said. "Before I trigger my healing I'll pull the portal to the army room out, you will have to resize it from your side, just push the silk steel thread apart."

"Yes, my lord," Jeff said. "We will be there to help as soon as we can."

I pulled out the thread portal to the army room in as little time as I could manage, using the last of the energy in the muscles of my right arm and then triggered the repair program. And endured the infinite cycles of never ending extreme pain.

I came to in the process of rolling on the ground not having completed one full roll. I dropped into the war room simulation and lowered the time perception there to its maximum from the tenth of normal speed that it was at. The simulation was showing mostly the army room with the people in my army lined up at the portal that was just beginning to open between Ursula's clawed paws. The other side of the wall that the portal was opening in had a rough estimate of what was happening there, projecting from when I had blacked out.

"Who-" Jeff said, looking around and seeing my transparent representation. "My lord, you're back. We haven't opened the portal yet."

"That's fine," I said. "I overlooked that you would be limited to moving at normal speed. Continue on, I just wanted to check here first. I will be updating the simulation again from my senses."

I returned the simulation speed to one tenth of normal time and focused on my body. My arms and legs were completely refreshed, and other than the two holes in my armour I was back in my original condition. I slapped my right hand against the ground as I was rolling, pushing myself back up to my feet.

There was an ice launcher laying on its side four meters in front of me, and it had been giving me cover from the marksman with the long ranged weapon while I was on the ground. My shield portal was finally in range for me to pull out of my pocket portal and I put it on my right arm, angling it to protect me from the front.

Behind me on the ground the portal to the army room was opening, Ursula's claws sticking up out of the ground. I sank my power into the ground and thread of the portal, standing it up. Ten of the ice launchers were still in working condition, and there were still sixty snow men just meters in front of me. And of course the marksman seven hundred meters away.