Chương 92: 91: Pow-Clack

Katherine was already moving. Harmony rested in her left hand, the nunchaku's dark wood humming with a resonance it had never possessed before the Nonagon awakened. She could feel every shift of its balance, every subtle pull of the chain as it settled naturally into her grip. A Stepper broke through the chaos ahead of her. He was enormous, easily a head taller than anyone else in the corridor, his broad shoulders swallowing the flickering ceiling light.

A freckled face was dominated by a crooked nose and a jaw that looked carved from granite. His thick neck was corded with muscle, the kind earned by years of surviving blows that would've killed anyone else. Cropped red hair bristled across his scalp like rusted wire. His grey-and-crimson armour was still intact, but his helmet lay discarded after the Nonagon had flooded his HUD with nightmares. Blood continued to trickle from one nostril. For a man his size, he moved with startling grace.

Butter was already locked in combat with the Operative, her pink eyes fixed on the taller woman as their fight spiralled away from the main group. The Operative stood nearly six feet tall, with short blonde hair, thin lips, cruel brown eyes and a hooked nose beneath sharp brows that gave her an eternally calculating expression. Her angular face had learned to bury pain beneath cold efficiency. Even without Apis, years of exposure had permanently altered her physiology.

The Magpie Serum had evolved alongside the constant reinforcement, leaving her roughly two hundred times stronger than a peak human. The advanced exoskeleton woven through her armour multiplied that strength fifty-fold. Butter was still stronger. Still faster. The Operative simply knew how to survive against people stronger than herself. Another Stepper closed in from Butter's flank. He was shorter and broader, with a barrel chest wrapped in scarred grey-and-crimson armour.

His head was shaved clean except for a jagged scar running from brow to jaw. Dark brown eyes sat beneath heavy brows, while a flattened nose and square jaw gave him the battered face of a lifelong brawler. A crooked grin exposed large, slightly yellowed teeth, one canine chipped clean in half. Resting across his shoulders was an enormous sledgehammer fitted with rocket boosters along its haft, its steel head still glowing with residual heat.

Katherine caught the red-haired Stepper slipping beyond Butter's peripheral vision, using her focus on the Operative as cover. His hand dropped to his belt, fingers closing around a compact cylinder. Smoke exploded between them. Dense grey clouds flooded the corridor, swallowing everything in choking haze. Katherine's eyes watered as her lungs burned. She swung Harmony in a wide arc, hoping to intercept him before he closed the distance. The blade came from above. He had never been in front of her.

The smoke had only been a distraction, concealing his true approach as he vaulted from a nearby pillar. His body twisted through the air while a monomolecular blade descended toward her face. Its edge was so impossibly thin it almost vanished in the dim light, designed to part flesh, bone and thought before she could finish her next breath. Katherine saw everything within a fractured instant.

The cobalt outlines behind her eyes traced his trajectory, the path of the blade, the angle of his wrist, the precise point where his weight would settle as he landed. Harmony answered. The nunchaku snapped through a new arc, correcting itself with impossible fluidity. Its wooden head smashed into the Stepper's wrist, cracking bone and sending the monomolecular blade skittering across the floor in a shower of sparks. The returning strike whipped into his temple with a sickening thud. THWACK. He staggered.

His eyes lost focus as his balance collapsed beneath him. Momentum carried his massive frame sideways like a falling tree. Clock's heel crashed into the side of his skull. The clean, devastating kick ended the fight instantly. The man's eyes rolled back as he collapsed, his enormous body slamming into the stone floor. Even stripped of Gloom, Clock's physicality remained absurd. He was still at least three times stronger than Butter.

The Steppers possessed bodies roughly fifty times stronger than a peak human, while their powered armour amplified their strength and speed ten-fold. Without functioning Apis, it was only enough to stop them from being reduced to pulp by the first hit.... Katherine barely had time to register the opening. Another Stepper descended from the ceiling with perfect control. He was lean and brown-skinned, with jagged black hair cut into carefully maintained spikes.

Native tattoos ran across his chin and climbed one temple in sharp geometric patterns. His armour differed from every other Stepper's, covered in aftermarket modifications that spoke of countless hours spent in workshops instead of training halls. Tools hung beside his weapons, and his heavy industrial boots looked more suited to construction than combat. He launched into a dropkick. The reinforced boots shot toward Clock's chest with flawless precision.

Hidden mechanisms activated at the last possible instant as positional magnets violently accelerated the strike, pulling his feet toward the target like twin railguns. THOOOOOM. Clock grunted. His crossed forearms absorbed the impact, the force shuddering through every bone in his arms. He slid backward a full step, heels scraping across the stone as pain exploded through his elbows and shoulders. The magnets weren't designed merely to increase momentum. They were far crueler.

Every kick delivered its enormous force directly into the nervous system, bypassing conventional toughness. Even someone vastly stronger could block it, yet the sensation would still feel like taking a bullet deep into the marrow. His forearms throbbed relentlessly. The ache spread into his shoulders and settled inside every joint like a splinter that refused to come free. He flexed his arms, trying to shake away the pain, but it lingered.

"Should've had my guitar out," he muttered through clenched teeth.

"Before the magic was revoked." The inventor landed in a crouch, already drawing his weapon. It was an odd little thing - compact, with a single barrel and no visible magazine. A springer. It held only one bullet. The weapon was engineered so the projectile travelled exactly far enough to pass through its target before curving back into the barrel. Every return accelerated it further, each cycle compounding its velocity until the projectile became a blur of impossible speed.

It resembled one of those toy tennis rackets with a ball tied to a string, endlessly bouncing back and forth. Except this "ball" was an indestructible projectile refined for perfect kinetic efficiency. Pow. The bullet streaked toward Clock's chest. He twisted aside, letting it skim harmlessly past his ribs. It struck the wall behind him, ricocheted cleanly, and screamed back toward the waiting barrel. Clack. The bullet seated itself back into the chamber and fired again instantly, faster than before.

The Stepper never had to reload. The weapon cycled the projectile automatically, each return adding another layer of velocity. Pow. Clock dropped into a roll, feeling the air split as the bullet carved through the space his head had occupied a heartbeat earlier. It slammed into the ceiling, ricocheted, and came screaming back. Clack. Another cycle. The projectile tore past his thigh, slicing through his trousers and leaving a burning line across his skin.

Clock lunged forward and drove a punch at the Stepper's face. The suit's pulse points flared. Reinforcement surged through the jaw and cheekbone just before impact. Clock's fist crashed into armour that might as well have been immovable. BOOOM. The shock rebounded straight through his arm. Pain rippled from his knuckles to his shoulder as the force of his own strike reflected back into him. He withdrew, flexing his bruised hand. The Stepper grinned.

"I've never fought an Abomination before," he said, his voice bright with manic delight.

"This is incredible." Clock studied him. The suit wasn't merely advanced. It was perfect. Every plate had been shaped around the man's body. Every reinforcement was timed to his movements. Every pulse point had been calibrated with obsessive precision. Then Clock noticed it. A faint shimmer coated the Stepper's face. It was almost invisible, little more than a distortion in the air, but it was there. He'd mistaken it for a weakness. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road.

Support the author by reading it there. A gap. Somewhere flesh remained exposed beneath the armour. He'd aimed for the jaw expecting skin. Instead, he'd struck the strongest point on the entire suit. Understanding settled over him. The shimmer wasn't armour. It was bait. The designer had deliberately left it visible, inviting opponents to throw punches at a location reinforced beyond reason. Every strike wasted precious momentum while exposing the attacker to retaliation. The Stepper's grin only widened.

"Not bad," Clock muttered as he circled.

"You built this yourself."

"Proudly." The inventor's eyes gleamed.

"Three years. Every night. Every weekend. Every spare hour." He laughed to himself.

"My commander thought I'd lost my mind, but I knew I'd meet someone like you eventually. Someone arrogant enough to think the rules didn't apply." He bounced lightly on his reinforced boots.

"I built this suit for you." His grin stretched wider.

"I just didn't know your face yet." Clock took another measured step, reassessing him. The man wasn't simply eccentric. He was the sort of genius who had disappeared into a workshop for years, becoming so consumed by machines that he'd forgotten the people they were meant to fight.

"You think I'm crazy, don't you?" the Stepper laughed, the sound sharp and unsteady.

"Don't look at me like you're better than me. You freak. You absolute freak. You're not even human. You're not anything." He exploded forward. The magnets hidden inside his boots activated, wrenching his feet toward Clock's chest with brutal acceleration. Clock twisted aside, but the kick still clipped his shoulder hard enough to spin him sideways. Agony detonated through his nervous system. He winced as pain shot from his shoulder into every limb, sinking past muscle and bone to burrow directly into his nerves.

The magnets weren't built to break his body. They bypassed toughness entirely, driving the impact where resilience meant nothing. His teeth clenched. He couldn't keep blocking. The pain would kill him before the damage did. Focus. He gave reality a direction. Queen's Slide. The world obeyed. Space caught him like a chessboard beneath invisible hands, dragging him cleanly across a single line. One instant he occupied one square. The next, another. No leap. No dash. Reality itself shifted him from box to box.

The next kick swept harmlessly through the space he'd occupied a heartbeat before. Pow. The bullet shrieked past his ear. He ducked just in time. The projectile skimmed his scalp, drawing a thin ribbon of blood through his hair before smashing into the wall behind him. Clack. It snapped back into the barrel. Pow. It fired again. Even faster. Clock tracked it with desperate precision, weaving through the increasingly erratic pattern as it ricocheted around the corridor.

He dipped beneath one pass, twisted around the next, rolled under another. Every dodge was tighter than the last, the projectile carving closer with every cycle. He shifted his footing, already gathering the focus for Queen's Slide.

"Wow," the inventor laughed, eyes shining.

"An Abomination's running from me? That boosts my ego so hard." Clock's expression darkened. The technique faltered.

"…Seriously?" The Stepper's grin widened.

"You should keep running. It suits you." Clock scowled. His pride stung far more than it should have.

"…Alright." He rolled his aching shoulders.

"Come at me." His violet eyes locked onto the inventor.

"Don't hold anything back." A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Because I won't." The inventor attacked again. Clock caught one kick on his forearm and redirected another, but a third slammed into his ribs. The positional magnets dumped the impact deep into his body instead of across the surface. Something cracked. Pain flared through his side. Pow. The bullet screamed past his hip. Clack. Pow. Faster again. Clock's eyes tracked the impossible blur as it ricocheted off the far wall and snapped back toward the waiting barrel.

Every cycle multiplied its velocity by another factor of two and a half. The first shot had already crossed the corridor at roughly ten times the speed of sound. Now it was becoming something else entirely. How? His mind raced even as his body moved. The barrel should've been glowing white by now. The projectile should've liquefied from friction. The recoil alone ought to have shattered the inventor's wrist into powder every time it fired. Yet the weapon cycled flawlessly.

The corridor became a cage of ricocheting death as the projectile carved an ever-tightening web through the air. Clock's movements grew more desperate, every evasion arriving a fraction later than the one before. He couldn't keep dancing forever. He had to end this. He landed a crushing blow on the Stepper's shoulder. The hit should've dislocated the joint. The suit's pulse points flared. Reinforcement arrived at the final instant, and the force rebounded harmlessly into Clock's arm. He struck the ribs.

Reinforcement. The knee. Reinforcement. The inventor laughed, almost doubling over.

"What's wrong?" he called, dancing backward.

"You look miserable. Relax a little. We're having fun." His grin widened.

"Don't tell me you're one of those sore losers." His boots lashed toward Clock's head, every kick propelled by magnetic bursts and manic enthusiasm. Clock planted both palms against the stone and flowed into a handspring, the boots scything harmlessly beneath him. His body completed the arc in one seamless motion, both legs whipping backward into the inventor's chest. The Stepper twisted just enough for the twin kicks to skim across reinforced armour instead of striking squarely. He laughed.

"Agile," he called, grinning from ear to ear.

"You should work at the circus. Heard they pay well nowadays." Clock landed lightly on his feet, his expression darkening. He understood. The suit could only reinforce one location at a time. It predicted where the next strike would land and committed everything to that point. Mislead the prediction...... and the defence would appear in the wrong place. There was another flaw. The pulse-point system operated on nanosecond reactions.

A supercomputer hidden inside the armour analysed trajectories, predicted impacts, and shifted reinforcement faster than any ordinary fighter could perceive. Even supercomputers had limits. If he struck several times within that reaction window, the processor would choke. Predictions would pile atop one another faster than it could resolve them. Reinforcement would arrive too late. The inventor's grin stretched wider.

"Your luck's running out, pretty boy." He lunged again. His heavy boots blurred through space as the positional magnets ripped him forward, while the bullet continued its relentless rhythm. Pow. Clack. Pow. Each cycle came faster than the last. Clock's eyes tracked its path. Almost impossible. He wouldn't escape the next few passes. He had to act now. Clock didn't retreat. He stepped in. His lungs filled with one slow, deliberate breath.

His diaphragm locked, his ribs expanded to their limit, every last pocket of air stored for what came next. Then he disappeared into motion. The Geometry of Checkmate unfolded through him. Capoeira flowed into the pattern, its ginga becoming the rhythm beneath every step, every pivot, every strike. He weaved effortlessly around the inventor as fists blurred toward his chest, throat and jaw, each blow arriving faster than the one before, a relentless cascade meant not to overpower the suit...... but to outthink it.

Thud. A blow buried itself in the Stepper's groin. Thud-thud-thud. Three punches hammered into his chest. The inventor's grin faltered. His suit struggled to keep pace, pulse points flaring desperately as each impact landed before the previous reinforcement had finished cycling. Clock had only flickered once. To the naked eye, he hadn't even seemed to move. Yet the suit had registered over a thousand separate impacts in that single instant. Can he really be that fast... while restrained? Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud.

More strikes crushed into his liver. Air exploded from his lungs. Clock became a blur. The Geometry of Checkmate flowed seamlessly through Capoeira and Changquan, his body coiling and uncoiling with impossible precision as every strike fed the next. THUD. Another punch folded the Stepper over at the groin. THUD-THUD. Two more buried themselves in his sternum. THUD-THUD-THUD. A vicious combination collapsed into his solar plexus. The suit began to fail.

Its nanosecond processor drowned beneath the relentless barrage, pulse points flickering wildly as they reinforced places that had already been hit. Clock lowered his gaze to his bleeding fist. It wouldn't be enough. He couldn't move quickly enough. He couldn't physically land enough blows. His eyes closed. Pawn's Advance. The simplest technique in the Geometry of Checkmate. A single punch. Nothing more. The cost was absolute. Every manifested impact demanded its due.

The fatigue returned exactly as though he had truly thrown every strike himself. A thousand impacts felt like running a marathon in the span of a heartbeat. His fist tightened. A thousand. Not enough. Ten thousand. Still not enough. He kept increasing the number, pushing farther beyond what his body could endure. His forearm trembled. His shoulders burned. His heart hammered against his ribs so violently it threatened to buckle beneath the strain. He lost count. Pride kept him standing. He had to defeat this man.

Within a single second... Clock landed two hundred and fifty million punches. He stopped. His arms trembled uncontrollably. Fire spread through his shoulders as every muscle screamed beneath the strain. He drew ragged breaths, lungs burning from the oxygen debt. Without Gloom, he couldn't sustain this. His body was supernatural. It wasn't limitless. Even the finest blade eventually broke.... The Stepper staggered backward, clutching at his armour as pulse points flickered erratically across the battered suit.

"What..." His voice shook.

"What did you do to my beauty, you freak?!" Clock looked up. Despite the pain twisting through every fibre of his body, a small smile found its way onto his face. He slowly shook his head.

"No." The Stepper's breathing hitched.

"No... no..." Clock took a step forward.

"You don't have the slightest chance of escape." Another step.

"You started it." His smile widened.

"We'll finish it." Pow. The bullet screamed past his head once again. This time it caught him. Its wake split the skin above his brow, opening a shallow gash. Blood spilled into his left eye, stinging his vision. Clock stepped around the next ricochet, wiping the blood away with the back of his hand. He wasn't giving the Stepper another shot. Clack. The pulse-point system rebooted, weaker now, its predictions stuttering beneath the accumulated overload. Perfect. Changquan.

The long fist flowed through him like water as he closed the distance. The suit reinforced the Stepper's forearms and chest, predicting another barrage. Clock never threw it. He feinted high. The pulse points rushed to defend the throat. His foot swept low instead. The Stepper's ankle disappeared beneath him. He crashed onto his back. Clock was already there. The inventor lashed out desperately, magnets igniting beneath his boots as he tried to create space.

Clock brushed the kick aside, stepped through the opening, and buried a knee into his solar plexus. The air fled the man's lungs. A palm strike snapped his head violently sideways. An elbow crashed into the hinge of his jaw. Blood sprayed across the stone.

"You said I was running," Clock said, his voice calm despite the blood dripping from his own knuckles.

"Why would I run from an inferior being?" The inventor swung again, slower now, panic replacing confidence. Clock slipped outside the punch. A backfist cracked across his cheek. A hammerfist folded him forward. Another knee drove into his ribs.

"Learn your place." BOOM. The elbow landed again. The inventor's eyes glazed over. Blood burst from his nose and mouth as his body went limp. Beneath the armour, the shockwaves from Clock's assault had almost certainly liquefied his organs. Even with the suit distributing the punishment, nobody could endure that many impacts without catastrophic internal trauma. Clock remained standing over him, chest rising and falling in ragged breaths. Every strike had punished him almost as much as his opponent.

Recoil surged through his arms with each impact. Bones lay cracked beneath his skin. Muscles had torn throughout his shoulders and back. His fists bled freely, trembling from exhaustion. Blood splattered across the floor as the engineer collapsed, leaving a crimson trail between them. Pow. The bullet made one final pass toward Clock's skull. Without looking, he caught it between two fingers. Clock rolled his aching shoulders as fractured ribs protested every breath.

At his feet, the inventor lay motionless, jagged black hair spread across the stone, his customised armour still humming with the last fading traces of its pulse-point system. Clock's gaze drifted to the Springer. The compact weapon rested where it had fallen, its barrel still warm. Elegant. Efficient. Beautifully engineered. He crouched and picked it up. It was lighter than he expected. Perfectly balanced. He slowly turned it over, studying the ingenious chamber that recycled the same bullet over and over again.

He stood there for a moment... Thinking. The Stepper had been an engineer. No ordinary soldier built weapons like this. The pulse-point suit, the positional magnets, the Springer - every piece reflected years of obsessive refinement. Useful. Clock holstered the Springer, rolled his aching neck, and exhaled. His entire body throbbed. Every nerve ached from the recoil of Pawn's Advance.

His brain felt overloaded, thoughts sluggish beneath the strain of forcing hundreds of millions of impacts through a technique never meant to be pushed that far. Fatigue weighed on every limb. His fractured bones protested the slightest movement, and his torn muscles burned with every breath. He was nearly out of energy. One more fight like that... and his body would simply stop obeying him. Clock closed his eyes. His feet settled into a narrow stance as he drew one slow breath through his nose.

The inhale descended into his lower abdomen before expanding through his waist and lower back. Liuhebafa. Breath, intention and body aligned as one. His shoulders relaxed. His tongue rested lightly against the roof of his mouth while each exhale grew longer than the last, circulating blood through battered muscles and slowing the frantic rhythm of his heart. He guided the breath through his frame with quiet precision, easing the spasms in his arms and forcing oxygen into torn tissue.

The cracks in his bones remained. The torn muscles still screamed. Healing like this wouldn't perform miracles. It would simply let him keep moving. His heartbeat steadied. The trembling lessened. Clock opened his eyes and exhaled one final time.

"That was close." He turned back to the fight.