Cyrus:

I landed on the ground with a soft “thud”. 

I was in a foul mood. My personal jet had just been shot down by some bastard or another, and I had been forced to dodge all those bullets mid-air in this atrocious weather. At least I could comfort myself with the fact that I wasn’t dead. Yet. 

I took out a longsword out of my soulspace and hurled it with inhuman strength in the direction where the bullets had come from. 

The sonic boom generated by the sword’s speed echoed through the valley as it soared between the peaks, reminding me of a pterodactyl. However, it stayed in flight for only 4.2 seconds until the sword evaporated midair, courtesy to a laser beam so large that it bored through (and collapsed) 5 mountains without any indication of weakening before finally reaching its target: me. 

I sighed. It seemed this battle would take longer than I had expected. Whatever. I would just have to apologize to the client upon arrival. 

I casually activated my absorption shields, which instantly set to work turning all of that sweet, sweet light and heat energy into Denergy, to replenish my reserves in preparation for confronting the inferiors that dared waste even a single moment of my precious time. In the meantime, I had already hovered to around an altitude of around 400 meters above sea level to finally get a good look at the idiots who thought it wise to attack a walking, talking superpower. 

No government would be stupid enough to challenge someone like me; it’d just be a waste of valuable national resources, and would do nothing but incur my wrath. I could destroy their country in an instant. However, they also didn’t take too nicely to invasions into their airspace, and as I hadn’t notified them beforehand, perhaps the attacks were just the automatic defense systems at work. After all, this valley was the only thing that separated the country from their less-than-friendly neighboring superpower. I wouldn’t have been surprised if over half of this country’s defense budget was spent in fortifying this valley each year. 

Finally, I could spot someone rapidly approaching me in the distance. Most likely the soldier in charge of the automatic defense station that had shot my plane down was hurrying to offer me an apology, after getting a good look at my face and confirming my identity. If this leaked out, the soldier would be fired for sure; execution was not out of the question. Their actions could have led to an international conflict; neighboring nations would hurry to try and curry favor with me by invading and destroying this country. Trade partners and alliance members would betray each other in a heartbeat if it meant that they could get on the good side of a superpower. 

However, as the person came closer, I realized that I had seen that silhouette somewhere before. It was oddly familiar, but I couldn’t quite link it to somebody I knew. Soon, I would be able to make out their facial features. 

When I recognized who my opponent was, I burst into laughter. From a bystander, or rather, byflier in this case, it seemed that I had suddenly gone insane. I didn’t stop laughing until she came to my eye level. 

The person before me was a girl, short for her age at around 165 centimeters. Her skin was tan-colored, and she wore a dark purple one-piece sleeveless dress that complemented it. On the other hand, her white ivory hair painted a sharp contrast with her dark skin, and was tied up in a single large ponytail. Her hair was unnaturally long, as her ponytail went down to her waist. Her body was as far as one could be from the word “voluptuous”, but her elegant curves could match any world-class beauty. She had an adorable heart shaped face, and her entire being emitted a sense of naivety and innocence. That was until one looked at her eyes. They were a shade of amber gold, and instantly drew one in. Those eyes elevated her from a human to an angel, and radiated an otherworldly beauty, one that was perfection itself. The halo above her head only served to accentuate this irrefutable fact. On more than one occasion, people would offer to adopt her as their daughter. She was not amused on those occasions. Her master even less so. 

That said, she was not my type. 

When my laughter finally died down, I spoke. 

“So, he’s sending you out for errands like this now? What does he want to do, test my strength? Your master really is stupid.” 

“It's good manners not to insult the deceased.” 

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

My nonchalant attitude disappeared in an instant. 

“He’s dead.” It was less of a question and more of a statement. 

“As of last night, yes.” Her stoic face did not even blink. 

Her calm expression only served to fuel the flames of anger that were slowly building up inside of me. How could she remain calm when the world’s power balance had just collapsed? 

“Who was the traitor?” Only an ally could stab someone as cautious as him in the back. 

I only realized how stupid I was after I uttered those words. Realization dawned on me, and I felt more idiotic by the second. I was next on her hit list. I calmed myself, and prepared for the upcoming battle. I asked the last question I wanted the answer to. 

“One last question: Why?” 

“You don’t need to know that.” 

With that, the battle began. 

I immediately went on the offensive. I needed to be careful, but I wanted to end this as fast as possible. Her analyzation abilities were frightening, and she could learn almost anything on the fly. I couldn’t afford to hold back against her. 

I summoned 4 greatswords from my soulspace and sent them flying towards her with some telekinesis. I had two of them flank her from both sides, while directing the remaining two straight towards her. She countered by summoning a pair of spears from her own soulspace and deflecting the flanking swords. As for the other two, she simply aimed a kick at them. While the air pressure generated wasn’t large enough to send them flying back towards me, it was more than enough to divert the swords away from her. 

I didn’t have time to launch a follow-up attack, as her counter-attack had already begun. A swarm of drones had emerged from her soulspace gate and had begun flying towards me. I took no chances; summoning a gatling gun, I started firing at the swarm before it got too close. Unfortunately, she was more cunning than I expected. 

The drones in the first row exploded into radioactive dust clouds as my bullets hit them, not the radiation had any effect on me anyways. With my vision obscured, I put the gatling gun back into my soulspace; there was no point wasting bullets by shooting around randomly, hoping to hit something. I took the time instead to move to another location, equip my modular armor, and summon a diamond lance and 6 more greatswords. She had most likely already equipped a set of goggles with long-range metal detection or thermal vision capabilities; she needed to effectively utilize the remaining drones she had in play. The lance was my hidden card, being undetectable by those means. I now expected her to bring this fight into close quarters. I levitated 5 of the greatswords to form a semicircle behind me to cover my back, and held the last sword in my right hand, with the lance in my left. 

What I didn’t expect was to hear a fighter plane in the distance. My first thought was that she was preparing for a run-and-gun, so I instinctively threw my sword in that direction, taking it down with an explosion, but she had expected that. The plane was just a decoy to fool me into exposing my location. Before I could relocate, she was had already emerged from the dust cloud with a spear in hand, ready to impale me. 

I grabbed one of the swords from the semi-circle, parried her spear, and thrust forward with the lance. 

She maneuvered away before the lance could puncture her heart, but she didn’t come out unharmed. I heard the satisfying sound of bones breaking; I had managed to pierce her right shoulder joint, leaving her right arm dangling uselessly, connected to the rest of her body by nothing but a few sinews. The gaping hole where her right shoulder once was would have made any regular soldier vomit on the spot out of horror and disgust. 

I was now on the offensive. I chased after my fleeing prey as she descended, and I almost fell for her trap. I had completely forgotten about her superhuman gate range. She had summoned a gate behind me, and a missile, accelerated by gravity, was making its way towards me, creeping upon me from above. It was only until I heard the thruster of the missile did I block it with my semicircular ring of swords. She detonated it mid-air before my swords could make contact, and to my surprise, instead of an explosive warhead, which I originally assumed it was, it was a shaped-blast warhead. The force shoved me towards her, and I only barely managed to dodge her slash with a falchion before I was hurtling through the sky towards the rock-hard embrace of Mother Earth. 

As I struggled to slow my descent and get back to my injured prey, I could only watch as she tore off her own right arm, cauterized it with a flamethrower, and attached a neural-prosthetic. It wasn’t to make up for her lost arm, but rather to adjust her balance. Even distribution of weight was crucial in aerial battles. She equipped an exoskeleton for enhanced strength and protection before charging back into battle. 

When I finally offset the effects of the blast, she was upon me, ready to get me back for the lost arm.  

As she charged towards me with the help of the thrusters attached to her exoskeleton, I was prepared. I summoned a poleaxe, and when she came within range, I aimed for her a diagonal slice across her torso. She dodged it, just as I expected, and I thrust with my lance while she was mid-dodge. I would have punctured her right lung, had she not grabbed my lance with her neural-prosthetic, and crushed the diamond into powder. 

For a second, I panicked. It was impossible to calibrate a neural-prosthetic within 1 hour with any of the ones on the market. Even if the process was accelerated with an artifact, it would still take at least 10 minutes. Unless... 

Damn that Paelen. She made another breakthrough? 

My brief moment of distraction was rewarded with a stab in my kidney with a bayonet. I looked down right in time to watch as the shotgun said bayonet was attached to blew a hole through my stomach. The poleaxe had been kicked out of my hand with her left foot before I could counterattack while her right foot stomped my body towards the ground. 

Her raw strength was terrifying, to average humans, and equipped with her exoskeleton, even I could get injured from a hit. My impact created a crater in the mountain that I landed on, but before I could recover my wits, 7 guided missiles loaded with nitroglycerine payloads made sure to disintegrate what remained of my body. 

For good measure, she had also released chemical weapons, which my regeneration was helpless against. 

I didn’t bother regenerating. I would rather die painlessly. 

Moments later, all that would remain of me would be a pile of dust, the remains of my disintegrated corpse.

Warm-up time was over.