After Lloyd injected himself with the golden fluid, all the pain in his body slowly disappeared.
This allowed him to watch the members of unit 68 fight with a far clearer mind. Although the pain was all but gone, he couldn't move yet, so he watched patiently for his time to strike. He had a reason for asking for that time. And he was going to put it to good use.
The monster gently stood up, dusting off the wet dirt from the impact of Bruce's charge. Once again proving to everyone that he was no normal beast.
Colt saw this as the perfect opportunity to strike, stretching out his hands, revealed a glowing tattoo of a blade on the palm of his left hand. He then raised his right hand to his left palm, causing the hilt of a blade to spontaneously manifest from the radiant tattoo.
He held the hilt with his right hand and swiftly pulled out a blade of light from his palm, sparing no time as he lunged at the monster, who was cleaning himself.
Colt's blade landed with a loud bang as it slashed at the skull of the beast.
Although the pressure from the attack alone was enough to slightly lift leaves off the ground, the blade didn't manage to leave even a scratch on its skull. Unphased, it simply continued cleaning itself, not even acknowledging Colt as a threat.
Cold sweats ran down Colt's face. He knew Bruce's attack barely phased it, but he could never have expected that it would take a slash from his saber and go unharmed.
His blade was a replica of the white star vestige, a blade said to be strong enough to clear the skies in a single slash. Colt's blade, being a replica, meant that it only had a fraction of the power of the true white star vestige, but even at that, it had the sharpness to cleave through steel like butter and withstand tons of force without cracking. Yet it couldn't scratch the exoskeleton of the owl man.
Colt was dumbfounded and made a tactical retreat. He wouldn't be able to scratch this thing alone, let alone beat it.
He needed his team.
The owl man finished patting himself off and then said words calmly
"There we go, nice and clean. Now, who wants to die first?"
As it said those words, the aura around it changed. It was like he had been playing with his food at first, and was only now taking the hunt seriously.
Everyone's instincts screamed the same thing as they sensed the danger. The dread of death was near.
As the tension between unit 68 and the monster grew even stronger, the rain seemed to be suspended as drops of water froze in the air.
The monster's eyes widened, and their crimson color deepened as the rain suddenly ceased.
Scarlet wisps of radiant aura fled from Bruce's frame. Each wisp attaching itself to the slow-falling raindrops and neck bones of the squad, leaving a symbol of an upside-down question mark on everything it touches.
Lloyd didn't have the capacity to see the world in slow motion like the rest of the squad, but Lloyd could tell that Bruce had activated his complex solely from the red tendrils he could see exiting Bruce's body.
Bruce's complex, RAM (Reactive Auxiliary Mind). Was a cognitive acceleration complex that mimicked how a computer's RAM operates. It increases the brain's processing speed by externalizing mental workload into surrounding particles.
In this case, those external particles would be the rain.
Scarlet wisps of aura emanate from the user's body, attach themselves to airborne matter within a 25-meter radius, and convert each particle into auxiliary processing units. The more and larger the particles present, the greater the increase in cognitive speed and clarity. Without particles, RAM doubles cognitive performance for the user alone.
But if certain environmental conditions like rain, snow, or dust filling air are met, it becomes exponentially stronger. It then becomes possible to share this heightened logical state with up to seven people at a time, allowing them access to not only supercharged cognitive functions, but also the ability to share thoughts between each other like a psychic link.
Bruce's large frame made him seem like a tanker to the untrained eye. And although he is stronger than everyone but Briggs, when it came to hand-to-hand combat and extreme battle tactics, he remained unmatched by anyone in the unit.
Each member close to Bruce had red light being emitted from their eyes as the upside-down question mark appeared on their necks, symbolizing that Bruce's abilities had been used on them.
Unite 68 ran towards the monster like they were monsters themselves. Colt used his saber of light to cleave at the monster's ankles, hoping to bring it to its knees. His blade slashed through the air, slicing through raindrops and mud particles alike to fall the fiend, landing on its leg with a loud pang.
But his attempts were futile before the seemingly indomitable frame of the creature
Briggs threw an abnormally aggressive and powerful punch at the creature's head. The force from the punch crushed the raindrops between his fist and the target's head into high-pressure mist. But much to his surprise, his fist was only as effective as the attack from Colt's saber, which amounted to nothing.
Noticing his attack was unable to phase the beast, he twisted his body and used his legs to make a follow-up attack. His kicks landed with greater intensity than his punch. But just like before, it did absolutely nothing.
Briggs persisted with his attacks, landing one furious punch after another, each one stronger than the last.
His complex "escalate" allowed him to stockpile wasted energy from every attack he made, increasing the maximum power output of each consecutive strike by ten percent. This means that the eleventh strike he lands will be twice as strong as the first attack. The ability could theoretically go on infinitely, increasing his total damage output as long as two conditions are met.
The first of those conditions being that he must not be hit by his opponent, and the second being that he must continuously hit with nothing more than a five-second time lag between attacks.
Through the cultivation of his normal body strength, Briggs could crush a bowling ball and punch through reinforced concrete with one hand without using his complex. He was always more physically gifted than his peers while growing up. It was like his complex was destined to be his.
But now, that strength he thought to be indomitable had no effect on the adversary he faced at the moment.