When Doctor Otto landed, Schiller had already arrived. Seeing the other man aiming a high-energy ray gun, he instinctively dodged to the side.
"Bzzz—"
An incredibly dazzling beam shot from the muzzle. Even Hulk hurriedly lowered his head to avoid it, while Captain America used his shield to cover his eyes. The radiance was so blinding that a single glance could scorch one's retinas.
Only Dario, who knew nothing about Otto, conjured crimson magical light in his palm and raised a magic shield before himself. Yet under the massive energy output, the shield lasted less than three seconds before shattering abruptly, and the energy beam struck him squarely in the chest.
Dario was blasted backward. A huge hole had been burned through the skin on his chest, his lungs were charred black, and ribs showed on both sides.
The others all clicked their tongues. They had expected Otto's energy gun to be powerful, but not this powerful.
Otto had always been researching the Artificial Sun project. However, ever since the Solar System Development Plan began converting the Sun's actual energy on a massive scale, he had changed directions and begun studying highly compressed miniature suns.
The high-energy ray gun had been born under those circumstances. It was no exaggeration to say that there was a miniature sun in his gun with its fusion reaction nearly complete, capable of melting almost anything in an instant.
It still had plenty of flaws—long cooldown times, a high failure rate, and indiscriminate light-based attacks—but there was no denying that the first shot was astonishingly powerful.
The newly constructed human starships currently carried enlarged versions of these high-energy ray guns. They were also the only ship-mounted weapons built solely with human science and technology. Of course, Otto had not developed them; research along the same