Chương 220

Orion raised his hand, waiting for the precise moment the engineer went to activate the construct, and all members of the unit's attention focused on him. The moment the man made contact, he dropped his hand. Dorian emerged from the rocky cover, not hiding the loud crunch of his heavy boots in the snow, and shouted loudly, capturing the whole ridge's attention.

"For the Sanctum!"

"Contact. Magic-users, two o'clock," Neoas, the one Orion had pegged as the leader, barked. His voice was heavily modulated through his angular helmet, lacking any human inflection.

"Suppressing fire. Load the alchemical slugs." Although they had timed everything well, the Iron State agents quickly recovered and soon moved to engage. Four crossbows fired in unison, and the whine that followed told Orion that while they looked the part, these weapons weren't as advanced as Earth's guns, or at least not as fast. Dorian flared his mana, creating a glowing wall of solid light between the squad and the soldiers. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Despite already knowing what would happen, Orion watched with a heavy heart as the physical slugs struck Dorian's shield. It held, demonstrating that he truly had a talent for defensive magics, but the moment the bullets hit the light, their casings ruptured, splashing highly concentrated Silence directly onto the magical lattice. Dorian grunted in pain from the sudden feedback, stumbling back half a step.

The golden hexagons where the bullets hit instantly turned a rotten grey, and the lattice cracked and hissed under the anti-magic mixture, eventually falling apart. If that had been the entire plan, it would have led to a quick defeat since the four shooters were already reloading and preparing to fire again, and Orion doubted Dorian could summon his shield with the same strength more than a couple of times without taking a break. Fortunately, that wasn't the case.

While their tank attracted the enemy's attention, the rest of the team scrambled around the rocky wall and took up advantageous positions that allowed them to rain their own suppressive fire on the enemy. Out of the corner of his eye, Orion saw Luna level her wand, her eyes narrowing as she visualized something. A blindingly bright, razor-thin orange line shot from the wood a moment later, aimed directly at the engineer's chest. That was a crucial part of the plan.

Although the man appeared the weakest, Orion could sense more complex energies from him, meaning he probably had access to more dangerous artifacts. Taking him out of the fight as quickly as possible would make everything run much more smoothly. The beam hit him as expected, but instead of piercing his armor as it did with the ice elemental, the plating on his chest flared up with a violent reaction. A cloud of white alchemical smoke burst from the armor, vigorously scattering the photons of Luna's spell.

The engineer staggered back with a shout of pain, scorched and bruised, but he was alive. And worse, he demonstrated some kind of extrasensory perception because he immediately reached for his belt and hurled a sphere toward the dark crevices on their left flank, which detonated mid-air, releasing a high-frequency screech and a sprawling cloud of luminescent dust. A curse echoed from the shadows as the dust clung to an invisible form, completely neutralizing Pauline's stealth.

The sphere hit the ground and transformed into a tripod-mounted automated turret that reminded Orion of the helmet of one of the iron golems he'd fought in the factory, just smaller, instantly tracking the glowing dust and opening fire. Pauline was forced to dive behind a boulder, pinned down by the drone's rapid-fire Silence rounds, and Orion suspected it would take her some time to clear the dust. That essentially takes out our strongest member.

Or, well, not completely, since she doesn't just have shadow magic, but it weakens her considerably. How the engineer knew exactly which weapon to use against her, despite it being their first time meeting and Pauline being a very unorthodox witch, he didn't know for sure, but he had a suspicion.

"The Magistra is contained. Engage the leader," Neoas ordered, his visor locking onto Orion, and he then leveled his own crossbow at him, clearly intending to take him out just as quickly. Orion reached for the Field, targeting the heavy soldier, and released a pulse of immense gravity directly on him, aiming to crush the man against the stone and tear the crossbow from his grip. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The rock beneath Neoas cracked under the sudden weight, forcing the soldier to bend his knees, but he didn't fall. Runes carved into his greaves flashed, and his boots magnetically locked to the stone, anchoring him and supporting his stance. More worryingly, Orion felt his spell warp as the [Reactive Adaptation] Trait of the knight's class activated.

The magitek circuits running through Neoas's armor flashed bright blue, actively resisting the gravitational pressure and restructuring the armor's internal mana flow to disperse the weight. The spell wasn't entirely nullified, but it was weakened enough that Neoas could push through it with his mechanically enhanced strength. Not giving Orion any more time to change his strategy, Neoas marched forward, fighting gravity as if it were just an inconvenience, and fired.

A bullet tore through the air, forcing Orion to fire a micro-pulse of [-g] to propel himself sideways, hitting the snow just as it struck the pine behind him, instantly turning a good chunk of its trunk into ash.

"They will adapt to sustained magic!" Orion yelled, coming to the conclusion that fighting a battle of attrition against specialized anti-magic technology would turn against them.

"Change tactics to indirect attacks! Blind them and bash them!" His friends didn't need more details, thanks to the numerous fights they'd gotten into during their current deployment, and they immediately went about following his orders. Luna shifted her stance, stepping back from her outcropping and sacrificing the line of sight it provided on the enemy. She abandoned the surgical precision of her new class, reverting to her raw, fundamental pyromancy.

Swinging her wand around with a grin, she unleashed a roaring wave of fire. That should blind any sensor, good thinking. Unfortunately, I don't think it will fool any of them, but it's enough to work with. He was surprised to find that the reactive plating on the enemy's armor couldn't deflect the area-of-effect spell, since it wasn't aimed at any specific target.

This forced the soldiers to fall back a step, their visors rapidly darkening to shield their eyes, and their suppressing fire briefly stopping as their targeting systems scrambled.

"Aha! Yes!" Dorian roared and, unmindful of the burning flames, rushed into the chaos once more. Relying solely on his massive Body stat and the heavy steel of his sturdy tower shield, he charged the blinded line, crashing into the closest scout with the force of a battering ram. The impact crushed the scout's chest plate and sent him flying off the ridge. Before the others could think of rescuing their companions, lances of light pierced their armor.

The initial strikes knocked them over, and although the later ones caused less damage, the light's composition changed quickly afterward, keeping them pinned down and unable to adapt to the constantly shifting barrage. Orion decided that the others had things well in hand, and his eyes locked on Neoas. The Magitek Knight was still tracking him, his visor recovering from the flash faster than his subordinates', and at his signal, the others removed him from their targeting.

He didn't want to give the man a chance to adapt to light magic before he could use it on him, after all, and he doubted Selene could punch through his particular set. It looked much harder than what the others wore, and his level alone meant he had to be taken very seriously.

Distantly, he noticed that Pauline had finally started suppressing the drone-like artifact and made a note to recover its remains once everything was over because anything capable of holding her in place for so long, even with the surprise attack at first, deserved to be examined very carefully. Pulling a handful of beautifully cut amethysts from his lab coat, he faced the enemy leader. Let's see you adapt to everything at once. Neoas charged, sticking to the stone and running sideways, and leveled his crossbow.

Orion threw the gems in a wide arc around the Knight and snapped his fingers, shattering the delicate structures holding the [Slowed] spell matrices in stasis and unleashing chaos upon the peak. A [Gravity Cannon] hit Neoas from the left, knocking him off balance. As his armor's circuitry flared to adapt to the spatial distortion, a compressed beam of [Infinite Laser] struck him from the right, scorching his shoulder pauldron.

Before the reactive plating could fully deploy the alchemical smoke, an [Atmospheric Centrifuge] formed directly above his helmet, choking the intake valves of his armor. Neoas staggered, and his massive frame jerked as the [Reactive Adaptation] Trait desperately tried to handle the influx of opposing magics at the same time. The magitek circuits on his armor screamed, flashing erratically between blue, red, and grey.

"That's what you get for relying on tools to do your job for you," Orion muttered, feeling oddly validated that he'd taken the time to maintain his own skills. It was a strange moment for such a realization, but if he'd taken the easy path after crafting the CC and let it handle every piece of magic for him, he would have become just as dependent on it as Neoas was on his suit, despite the Trait originally belonging to him alone.

As it turned out, he didn't need to overpower the armor; he just had to disable its cooling and processing systems. And as Orion drew more mana from the Field, focusing solely on continuous damage, he used his metamagic to land the final blow.

"[Maximize Magic]," he muttered, aiming at the various spells going off around the man and bathing him in purple energy. Neoas raised his arms, trying to disperse the heat, but the suit's system was already lagging from the spells still going off around it, and the brass plating glowed cherry red before turning white-hot. The cooling vents on the suit's back shrieked, venting superheated steam, but it wasn't enough.

He let out a garbled, agonizing cry through his modulator as the suit's internal temperature skyrocketed. Then the joints fused, and the circuitry melted into slag. The massive Knight collapsed to his knees, cooked alive inside his own impenetrable armor, before falling face-first into the snow. System Notification +1 Mind +142, 200 Exp Level up!

To Orion's left, a metallic crunch echoed across the ridge, and he turned to see that Pauline had finally managed to bypass the automated turret's firing arc long enough to drive one of her shadow-infused daggers straight through the drone's primary sensor array. With the machine destroyed, she moved across the snow like liquid darkness, materializing directly behind the engineer. The man barely had time to turn before her blades smoothly sliced through the unarmored gaps under his helmet. He collapsed silently.

In the meantime, the others had finished the remaining scouts, and Dorian was leaning heavily on his shield, his breath fogging wildly in the cold air.

"Is everyone okay?" Orion called out, looking over his squad. He couldn't see or sense anything urgent, but asking was a better approach than assuming.

"Bruised to hell and back," Dorian grunted, rubbing his shoulder where the slugs had bypassed his failing shield.

"But I'll make it." The girls also nodded, though they looked completely exhausted, and Pauline gave him an approving look. He'd need to talk to her later to find out exactly what caused her magic to be suppressed so forcefully, because that powder was unlike any Silence-based weapon he'd seen. But for now, he had bigger problems to deal with. Turning his focus away from the bodies, Orion headed toward the center of the ridge, where the anti-air artifact waited for him.