Wagner lingered in his reminiscence.
Watching the newly arrived opponent for a moment, Li Ming's expression shifted into puzzled interest.
The newcomer stood over three meters tall and had an overall humanoid form, yet his gender was indistinct. His surface was patterned with vein-like markings, while the body itself radiated a pronounced metallic sheen — as if he were forged entirely of metal.
'Is that… a machine?'
At first Li Ming assumed another ork had arrived. He never expected an enemy he could not readily identify to appear out of nowhere.
The figure's proportions, perfect like a demi-god from an epic of ancient Greece, did not fit Li Ming's image of something ork-made. That level of design and symmetry lay far outside ork comprehension.
'Could this be the planet's defense against the orks? Did it simply attack the wrong target?'
After a brief hesitation and not wanting to risk misunderstanding, Li Ming decided to speak first.
"Who are you? Why are you attacking me?"
His translation module handled language barriers, so he spoke without worry.
Wagner detached himself from his memory and answered the human calmly:
"My name is Wagner. As for why I attack you—simply to test my mettle against you."
Although Orsaga's earlier command had been terse, Wagner had caught the significance of certain keywords. His lord wanted to gauge this human's ability through him. That explained why he had been restricted to a backup, non-principal body.
As a combat-oriented Fallen Machine Daemon Prince, Wagner's true primary form would normally be at least thirty meters tall. Fallen machine units typically displayed only middling solo combat effectiveness; most of their power lay in their attached fleets. Sending a fleet commander to duel a single opponent would be absurd—so this assignment was clearly deliberate.
'Perhaps my lord judges that in this form my power is comparable to the opponent's?'
Wagner wondered. He did not ask further; he simply obeyed.
Driven by antimatter electromagnetic accelerators within his chassis, Wagner closed the distance in an instant. He crossed hundreds of meters at hundreds of times the speed of sound and struck with a fist force measured in tens of thousands of tons. Even an aircraft carrier would be shattered by such a blow.
For Li Ming, it was over before he could fully process Wagner's words. Death's imminence rushed at him. Relying only on the Oma Zi-O armor's predictive combat function, he managed a split-second dodge — a hair's breadth that let the fist miss his head.
Even so, the violent air currents generated by Wagner sliced like a swarm of high-speed blades, shredding everything in their path. From Wagner's starting point to Li Ming's position, even pebbles were ground to dust by the passage of that shockwave.
Li Ming bore the brunt of the blow. He hastily wrapped himself in defensive fields, but the tsunami of force tore through those protections and flung him like a fragment caught in a typhoon. He was blasted tens of thousands of meters away.
The impact was catastrophic. Blood seeped through the armor under the extreme stress and was instantly vaporized by heat raised during supersonic flight. With a tremendous crash, Li Ming struck a mountain like a flaming meteor and buried himself hundreds of meters into the earth.
Soil and rock collapsed over him as blood and shattered organs spouted from his mouth. The shock ruptured his eyes and eardrums; crimson poured from his features. Only then did his mind register that he had been attacked.
It was almost impossible to believe: a near-miss had left him in such a state.
Wagner gave him no time for astonishment. The metal-and-flesh body tore through the mountain and scoured the rubble to find Li Ming. Without hesitation, Wagner unleashed another punch — again aimed at the head.
Sensing the approaching doom amid agonizing pain, Li Ming snapped into action. He screamed, "Use one-time character card Saitama and special item Senzu Bean!"
In 0.00000001 seconds, two energies tore open space and enveloped him. In an instant both his stamina and wounds were fully restored. A new power, utterly different from Oma Zi-O's, cloaked him.
One-time character card — Saitama: grants the user the power of Saitama (from One Punch Man) for 24 hours.
Special item — Senzu Bean: from the Dragon Ball world, instantly restores the user to full health.
Both items were prizes Li Ming had collected in prior adventures. He had never expected to need them here — and certainly not to almost be one-shotted.
Restored and furious, Li Ming threw everything into one decisive punch. He met Wagner, whose movement traces had previously been indiscernible.
Wagner, confronted by an opponent who had recovered from near death and now seemed amplified in strength, analyzed hundreds of contingencies in a fraction of a nanosecond. His antimatter reactor output leapt from 5% to 70% instantaneously; his fist became faster, stronger, and deadlier.
The collision detonated with apocalyptic force. At the point where their fists met, the impact generated a nuclear fusion reaction. A hurricane of scalding plasma and searing wind erupted, cleaving the mountain in two.
Blinding light and earth-shattering shock covered the combatants. When the glare faded after tens of seconds, a crater twenty kilometers across and six kilometers deep yawned where a thousand-meter peak had stood. Twisting rifts of varying lengths and depths radiated outward. Had either combatant held back, the destruction would have been far greater.
Li Ming stood above the pit, eyes locked upon a point in the upper atmosphere tens of thousands of meters away — the location where Wagner, whose arm had already been broken in their clash, now watched him.
Where Li Ming burned with murderous rage, Wagner remained unruffled. His metal face betrayed no tremor despite his own injuries.
...
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