My eyes stayed glued on the person in my hands for a few seconds, unable to say anything.
The person was Milo. He was so beaten and battered that I almost couldn’t recognize him. His glasses were broken, the fras hanging crooked off his face and barely clinging to one ear. Shards of the lenses had scratched thin lines across his cheeks, and his skin had taken on a grayish pallor that told he needed dical attention as fast as I could get it.
I could hear the sounds of strikes behind , hands whipping through the air and crashing against each other with enough force that the impacts alone shook through my chest.
His pulse was still there, but slow. For a mont, I ran through my mind wondering what could have gone wrong. The answer was slightly obvious from what the man himself had said.
’I guess the Manhattan people caught up.’
I gently laid Milo close to a rock, making sure he rested against it properly. Then I said to him, "Let get this over with and get you dical attention."
He nodded lightly, and I stood and turned to the cacophony beyond .
Maggie wrecked the man with the ease of a mother teaching her cocky son a brutal lesson. He had a summon that looked like a hunched tree, roughly around 2.3 ters tall. The front side of the body was pale white and organic, with hands that dangled past its knees, and the back side was black with grooved lines running across its surface as if depicting so ancient architecture.
Not that the summon was doing much of anything anymore. It rested slumped against one part of the wall with chunks of its body chipped away, pieces crumbling off it like old plaster. The thing looked like it was falling apart.
Maggie wasn’t even using her chains. She battered the man with her bare hands, closing the distance through the air with insane speed and crashing her fist into him. Her hands whipped forward and bombarded him from every direction.
The man was struggling to dodge, and to his credit, he was managing it. Barely. But having fought with Maggie a few tis, I knew very well that she had this thing she did where she let her opponents believe they were dodging on their own skill.
The only reason they were dodging was because she was allowing it.
Even with that allowance, the man was still eating brutal hits, his head snapping back from each one and blood flying from his mouth.
He staggered like a puppet with cut strings and Maggie closed in with a low stance that stretched her fabric and re-accentuated her features. Her palm flew forward and hamred the man seven tis in a single motion. It was so fast it sounded like one strike, but with enhanced hearing, I caught all seven impacts tearing through the air in rapid succession, each one layered on top of the last.
She snatched his clothes before he could fall back and wrenched him forward. Her knee ca up and his face crunched into it. Instead of letting the poor man finally drop, Maggie caught him by the face, twirled sharply, and whipped a slap across him that sent him flying sideways.
But she caught him again and drew him back like she was playing with a ball at a dance. She launched into the air, double kicked him, his body twisting and spiraling upward, and then she threw one more strike, hitting him with just the tip of her knuckles. That last one looked light.
It wasn’t.
An explosive shockwave ripped outward, and the whole place shuddered. The man blitzed away from her, his body carving into the rock wall beyond him and embedding itself there.
’Cold...’
I raised my hand and stared at my own knuckle for a mont.
’That was cool, how did she even pull that off...’
She grabbed her chain and whipped it free from her waist. She twirled the silver chain over her head once and then flung it backward without looking. The chain lashed out, wrapped around the man’s summon, and tore it from its position with zero effort, tossing it into the sa section of rock where the man had landed.
She straightened up and muttered with a disgusted tone, "Plebeians."
Then she turned and walked over, picking Nisha up and putting her over her shoulder before facing .
"Where do they get healing?"
’Ah, I forgot for a mont that I had Calamity tier summons...’
My battle with the Chaleon would have been so easy. I forgot. And outside right now, Kassie was saying she might have torn down the Manhattan Trade Center.
’I hope my presence in Recimiras will not cause too much trouble...’
On another hand, I think it might be too late to be thinking that.
"What?" Maggie said, glaring at .
I grinned at her. "You’re so cool, do you want to marry ?"
Her eyes glowered with vicious light as her hand drifted to the chain on her waist.
"What did you say now? You miscreant, I dare you to say that again."
I quickly recomposed and carried Milo. I was about to move when I rembered sothing very important.
"Wait... Maggie..."
She turned to , still glaring with a cold and dangerous intent buried in the depth of her zombie-looking eyes.
But I fretted not and asked my question.
’I feel like I lie to myself a lot these days...’
"Uhm, ah... that man, you didn’t kill him, right?"
She answered with a grim tone. "You can go ahead and check."
I gulped. "Goodness, it’s not like answering the question will hurt you. I was simply saying we need to bring him in for questioning, you know? So we can know the situation, how many of them are here and things like that."
She tilted her head. "Why?"
I thought for a bit and answered her. "To know how many of them are in the gate...?"
She looked straight into my eyes with a level of indifference in hers. Then she said evenly, "Does it matter?"
I froze for a mont, then chuckled internally.
’God, my summons are such aura farrs.’
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