Chapter 135
Her body, suspended with the aid of anti-gravity, suddenly spun—once, twice, three times—until it became six flips that carried her right, left, up, and down in a pattern impossible to predict.
Yet the wave continued to chase her, continued to follow, as if it possessed eyes of its own that she could not deceive.
Nirma then changed her rhythm.
Her body, which had been spinning, now leapt—one leap sent her darting to the left with a speed that made the wind hiss in her ears, two leaps carried her to the right with a rotation that resembled a ballet dancer performing her final solo on a stage she had never asked for.
Three leaps, four, five, until eight—she moved with strange forms, sometimes like a primordial tiger climbing a tree with invisible claws, sometimes like a bird trying to evade a hunter's arrow with wings it did not possess.
And on the eighth leap, when her body was inverted with her head below and her feet above, her ponytail hanging downward toward the ground, Nirma did something no one expected.
Her hand, which had been empty, suddenly reached into her innermost pocket, retrieving a date seed identical to the ones she usually used.
But this time, she pressed the seed between her index finger and thumb with a different pressure, a different rhythm, a different intent.
The seed bloomed in her palm—not into a conventional firearm, not into a standard combat tool, but into a small missile with a laser tip emitting a deep red light, a weapon from the year 2027 whose core was a controllable laser guided by the user's will.
Nirma pulled the trigger in the most impossible posture, a position that stretched her abdominal muscles to their limit, a position that made Arya, watching from afar, almost shout in disbelief.
Nirma watched her laser missile surge forward with a quiet pride she had never shown to anyone.
She saw the red glow of its warhead slice through the air, its trajectory straight and certain, as if nothing in the world could stop it.
For a moment, she was convinced that in the next second, it would strike directly at the center of the five-necked creature, ending all of this chaos in a single explosion that would look beautiful from the height where she floated.
But in that same second—when the missile was mere inches from its target, when it was just about to reach the Abnormal that still stood motionless within the vortex—Nirma saw something strange.
The first version of the liturgy that had filled all of Heraclea Cybistra with distorted hymns suddenly weakened.
It did not disappear, did not stop—it merely weakened, as if making way, as if opening a door, as if inviting the missile deeper into the heart of its domain.
For a brief instant, Nirma thought this was a victory too easily earned—that a creature capable of creating storms and sanity-breaking liturgies would not allow itself to be destroyed by a single laser missile from 2027.
And her suspicion proved correct when a strange pressure suddenly emerged from within the Abnormal's body.
It was not wind, not a shockwave, not an explosion—but something more primitive, more ancient, something far harder to explain with the language of physics she understood.
Nirma saw her laser missile stop in midair, right in front of the creature's neck, halted as if an invisible hand had caught it—then it began to change.
The metal that had once been solid and gleaming started to expand, peel, and char at an unnatural speed.
Within seconds faster than a blink, the missile was destroyed, burned, reduced to ash that scattered among the dust and the ever-echoing liturgy.
Nirma blinked once, twice, at a steady pace, as if to confirm that what she had seen had truly happened—that the missile she had fired with absolute confidence had left no trace whatsoever.
She felt something stir in her stomach—not fear, not anger, but something more complex.
A sensation that arose when one realized that the enemy they faced possessed abilities beyond calculation, that the game was not yet over, that something greater than a controllable laser missile might be required.
Across from her, Ashita—who had witnessed the destruction of Nirma's missile in such a bizarre manner—wasted no time.
She began to spin in place, her body suspended by anti-gravity rotating like a spinning top, faster and faster until it became a small vortex impossible for the eye to follow.
Nirma, watching from a distance, briefly wondered what the woman was doing—whether this was some kind of ritual, a war dance, or a way for Ashita to focus her energy before combat.
But within two seconds, just as Ashita completed her final rotation and her body stopped facing downward—directly toward the five-headed Abnormal below—Nirma saw something appear in her right hand.
A weapon.
Large, terrifying, with a long barrel and a design she had never seen before.
She did not need to ask to know that it was an M20 Browning—a legendary weapon from the 20th century known for its immense destructive power—yet she could also see that the weapon in Ashita's grasp was no ordinary M20 Browning.
There was something sleeker, lighter, more advanced in its design—a technology perhaps only born in the year 2233 AD.
Ashita pulled the trigger without hesitation, without pause, without giving anyone the chance to prepare.
Fifty rounds erupted from the weapon's barrel in a span of time that could not be measured by ordinary seconds, streaking downward at an already insane velocity.
Nirma could see how each bullet left trails of light in the air, like lines of fire painted by the hand of a wrathful god.
But the true miracle occurred five seconds later.
Momentum acceleration—a phenomenon Nirma had never imagined could occur in conventional ammunition—suddenly took effect on those fifty bullets.
Their already extraordinary speed increased into something absurd, something beyond explanation, something no eye or sensor could follow.
Nirma recalled a theory she had once read in future technology archives—that a single M20 Browning round from the year 2233 AD possessed speed comparable to light itself.
But with the acceleration now occurring, each bullet moved as if the universe itself were exploding for a second time—one hundred times the speed of light, one hundred times beyond anything she had ever imagined.
And she knew, even if she disliked admitting Ashita's prowess in front of others, that no creature on any earth could survive an attack like this.
Tegar had never been the type to let his partner fight alone.
From the moment Ashita began spinning in the air with the M20 Browning of the year 2233 AD in her grasp, from the moment those fifty bullets shot forward at incomprehensible speed, Tegar had already begun preparing something equally lethal.
To be continued…