[MA] 167. Air Superiority (Patreon)

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[A/N: 3/3 chapters this week. Next one on Tuesday.]

The Feng Clan's Hurricane Martial Arts truly shined against multiple enemies. Shen dodged most projectiles, pushed some away with his aura, deflected a few with his qi-filled body, and crushed the remaining with his spear.

He focused more on not losing health points than killing enemies. He had three reasons for that.

First, time was supposedly on his side as his army positioned itself to assist with the fight; they should be moving to engage the enemy any moment now. Second, Earth needed new D-ranks, so he wanted to give other people the chance to hone their skills while he distracted the enemy elites. Third, and most important, every health point counted. He recovered a mere 24 HP per hour, which wasn't useful in the fight.

Shen could still buy health crystals for 9,000 AP each and had enough AP to buy a hundred of them. He also knew that the system could understand him despite any grievous injury to his mouth. Back in the rift, he had brought crystals despite lacking lips, front teeth, and half of his tongue. Even he hadn't understood himself, but the system had, probably thanks to its excellent translation function.

That was doubly fortunate because he had also learned how bad an idea was to carry the crystals with him. They could be destroyed and didn't heal him if they weren't touching his skin.

Unfortunately, the crystals' fragility made it impossible for him to carry them in contact with his skin. They were easy to crush to allow even people on the brink of death to heal themselves, but it caused them to get shattered by Shen's body's vibration alone when he moved too fast. The Guardian Store hadn't offered alternatives when he asked the system about it.

So he did his best not to get injured while also killing his enemies.

And kill them he did.

They were just too slow. Even their fastest barely reached Mach 7 while Shen was going at Mach 21. Most of them moved on ranges between Mach 3 and 6.

Since Shen could move at Mach 10 with D+ agility alone, it was evident that these people were what modern humans called "cannon fodder." They were being used to tire him out before the true elites came.

This rabble had a hard time merely targeting him. A Guardian's speed was directly linked to their agility, mental acuity, and perception. Shen was gone when most spells came his way unless the gnolls targeted a large area or attacked from afar. The further away from him they were, the better they could see him move and adapt their projectiles accordingly. However, being too far made it so Shen could use the closer enemies as meat shields just by moving the right way.

Shen never stopped. He avoided wasting time against defenses he considered too much trouble, like powerful shields and highly specialized defensive Skills or spells. Combat, Sharpness, Arc Flash, Flow, and even Zephyr—to a lesser extent—let him estimate his enemy's defenses with great accuracy. He used his superior speed and footwork to attack sideways or avoid troublesome protection while seeking easier targets.

And there were plenty of easy targets around.

Five hundred D-ranks had come from the portal, and by their movements, Shen estimated they all had D agility at most—unless some were hiding their strength. He didn't even meet any gnoll with D+ resistance as he attacked. He took it as a sign that the enemy wanted him to have a way to kill these weaklings. If they were too much trouble, Shen might just flee. They wanted him locked down instead.

He was proven right soon enough.

Multiple layers of magic domes were already being created around Shen and the closest gnolls. They sought to trap and neutralize him even before sending the true elites. Maybe the peak D-ranks wouldn't even be needed, depending on how Shen fared against the domes.

He quickly reached one of them and tested his mighty against it. It was destroyed with a single thrust—though dozens of others were already forming. He didn't think the gnolls around were strong enough to create such large domes and guessed what was going on: invisible enemies were around. He had seen the gnolls use invisibility inside the rift, too.

Despite the danger, Shen still couldn't leave. The only way to accomplish that was to head straight in one direction, but then his army would be endangered. He should at least thin the number of visible D-ranks before the others showed themselves.

So Shen kept killing.

The spells targeting the area around him were relatively easy to deal with. His aura was stronger the closest it was to him, so the range negated by the monolith wasn't as relevant—although it was probably preventing him from sensing the invisible gnolls. Even weakened, his aura could still deny up to thirty Concept-filled mana sources before their influence bit too deeply and the spells touched him. By dodging most attacks and only denying the ones that could reach him, he could keep the number of Concept-filled spells he had to deal with way below thirty.

To be honest, it helped that the gnolls couldn't just lay area spell over area spell on him. Five were active at any time, but any more than that, and they seemed to interfere with each other.

Speaking of interference and denial, three more monoliths had come through the portal, but they didn't take more from his aura. Shen guessed it had to do with them being the same objects without a will.

Targeted Concept-filled spells were more of a hassle, but his tight defense and selective aura usage still let him deal with them, losing only one HP here and there.

As for the close-range attacks, Shen barely noticed them in the rare instances they came for him due to their low speed.

He didn't even need to dodge as a gnoll started to swing their sword at him. He beheaded them—cutting through magic metal with ease—and moved forth much before the sword could endanger him.

Seven gnolls approached. They had similar magic long dark robes that moved independently from the wind, twisting and shaking randomly, making it harder to see their movements. All wielded two spears and were obviously specialized in decreasing their target's maneuverability before killing them.

Shen cut one of them from the head to the middle of their legs before they could react to his speed. Then crushed the others.

If anything, the only bad part of Shen's speed was how the system struggled to keep up. Its cleaning functionality only turned the enemy and their equipment into light one to two seconds after they died. Shen constantly had to deal with the temporary uneven ground created by the corpses he left in his wake.

Speaking of ground, spells and Skills changing the terrain were the most annoying to deal with. Not challenging, just irritating. They decreased his speed by one or two Machs, which wasn't much but forced him to adapt constantly.

After one minute, Shen had killed almost two hundred D-ranks already. He had learned how to control his qi expenditure in the rift, and his reserves hadn't dropped even two percent.

The gnolls better spring their trap fast, or in less than two minutes, Shen would be done with the weak D-ranks and head toward the enemy monoliths to make the fight easier for his people.

= - = - =

Outside the hundreds of domes already around Shen and the three hundred gnolls, the fight was also changing.

Behind Earth's tanks, the front-line Guardians, who specialized in defense, moved ahead slowly, their shields and defensive spells raised. They spearheaded the mass of troops following behind them.

The gnoll tanks targeted the ground troops then. On average, the plasma balls they shot could go through three defensive spells before being weakened by the fourth and stopping on the fifth. The defenders had trained for such an occasion and supported each other well.

Well, mostly.

Just as some mages failed to defend the tanks with their earth spells, so did some ground troops. When a plasma ball hit someone, they were instantly evaporated. The explosion took everyone around in a ten-yard range, and not even bones were left. The defenders were tightly packed, supposedly to support each other better, so many died on each shot.

Fortunately, though, they learned quickly. More spells stacked on top of each other, including from defenders that should be reserving their willpower. It was better to be wasteful now than die.

Earth's artillery shells, long-range missiles, and heavenly beams destroyed more tanks with relative effectiveness, but that was about to change.

Ten monoliths had made it through, each protected by three D-ranks. The D-ranks had focused on protecting the monoliths until now, but one had left each monolith and approached the tank line. Even as Shen gave it a brief look, he saw missiles and shells hit invisible barriers in the air, all straight above the moving D-ranks. They were obviously on the way to protecting their front lines now that the vehicles had fulfilled their mission of setting up a perimeter for the gnolls.

The first step of the gnolls' invasion plan seemed over; now, they were moving on with the second part.

That was demonstrated by humanity's significant loss in the aerial battle. The thousand white cubes that had invaded with the five hundred D-ranks had moved straight at the bombers in the skies and destroyed them with ease.

Torn metal rained from the skies.

The jet fighters tried to bring retribution with their missiles, but the cubes were fast enough to get out of the way. The cubes then moved toward the helicopters.

The attack choppers defended themselves as well as they could. Since the cubes were coming straight at them, many of their missiles and bullets hit the bullseye, despite the awkward angle—the cubes came diagonally from above.

There were around three hundred helicopters in the immediate area around the portal, and modern weaponry alone destroyed fifty cubes. The Guardian mages onboard fared just as well, felling fifty more. Unfortunately, they focused more on defense, which proved the wrong decision; the cubes were good at crushing defensive spells.

Only three helicopters avoided getting pummeled down like flies—big, heavy metallic flies that caused chaos and further death when they fell over Earth's ground troops. The Guardians on the ground fared relatively well, but any commoner that wasn't aided in time met a gruesome death.

To humanity's credit, they reacted faster than Shen expected. He knew many jet fighters and attack drones were on standby, both on the ground and in the air, waiting to capitalize on some high-value strategic target. They made their big entrance before the D-ranks could protect everything or the white cubes could destroy all helicopters.

Five hundred jet fighters and two thousand drones came from the horizon. The three hundred extra attack helicopters in reserve also took to the skies. All flying vehicles rained an infinite number of missiles upon the enemy.

No one seemed to focus on any specific targets. They just wanted to inflict maximum damage to the gnolls, even if non-lethal, before the Guardians engaged directly.

Half the remaining white cubes—already moving toward the next helicopters—failed to dodge and turned into light. The gnoll tanks fared worse—almost every one of them already on Earth was destroyed. To Shen's surprise, even a D-rank defending the tanks died, though it took nearly fifty missiles before their spell failed and five times as many to kill them. They just had back luck; many missiles were shot in their direction.

No missile whatsoever made it past the portal though.

The D-ranks with the monoliths at the portal created magic barriers to protect their troops. Many got so exhausted that they fell to the ground, their willpower spent.

Yet they resisted.

In the end, Earth still lost its air superiority. The remaining four hundred white cubes were still there and moving against the remaining helicopters, while the armored flying vehicles and wyverns were coming through the portal without getting shot at by the missing jet fighters. It would still be some time until the jet fighters got to their bases, resupplied, and returned with more missiles. To make things worse, there weren't enough bases around, so the returning planes would be few and far between.

The attack helicopters were forced to land as the passenger ones took their place, carrying droves of Guardians to take their magic to the air instead.

"Helicopters, focus on destroying the cubes instead of defending!" Shen yelled using his Lion's Roar, not worried about how fast he spoke. He had tested it and was impressed when the system's translation function perfectly translated his words at Mach 20 speed to something Alicia could understand. "It'll be much safer for you!"

He had chosen to focus on fighting instead of leading in this battle. The generals knew what to do, and he was much more useful in direct combat. However, he still reserved the right to give pointed orders that he found pertinent.

That said, after his command, Shen completely cut off his observations and focused back on his fight.

The gnolls had defended the portal, but Shen knew they shouldn't have accomplished that—not with how many had fallen to their butts or knees, their willpower spent. More were hiding beyond his sight, which all but proved his early theory about invisible enemies.

In fact, if they were acting at the portal, they should be ready to act against him too.

As if on cue, five hundred extra D-ranks appeared around him to help the ones that remained from the first batch.

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