Before long, Benjamin had sprinted to the entrance of the office building and spotted Richard slaughtering another batch of guards.
Without hesitation, he charged at Richard like a crazed rhinoceros.
Although he had never met Benjamin before, Richard immediately recognized that he was no ordinary mutant agent.
Compared with Aiden and the others, Benjamin was far stronger in both presence and oppressive force.
Moreover, Benjamin's Steel Body gave him a sense of danger he had never felt before.
More precisely, it was only a faint sense of danger.
Though the feeling was not particularly intense, and he had no idea just how strong Benjamin's Steel Body was, one thing was certain: Benjamin was more difficult to deal with than Aiden and the others combined.
His judgment was correct. Benjamin was indeed more troublesome than Aiden and the others combined.
Otherwise, Benjamin, who possessed only Steel Body as a superpower, could never have firmly held the position of Action Department Director, much less commanded the unruly Inessa, Aiden, and the others.
In just two or three seconds, Benjamin had charged up to Richard. His metal-sheened right fist shot toward Richard's head like a cannonball leaving the barrel.
Just from the speed of Benjamin's punch, Richard knew that if it struck his head, he would definitely experience what it felt like for his skull to explode completely.
Even so, he did not use Flash to retreat. Instead, he threw out his right fist as well.
Attack against attack, fist against fist! Though he did not possess a Steel Body like Benjamin's, he also had Super Strength and Super Constitution far beyond those of ordinary people—and both had been enhanced several times.
Bang! Richard's and Benjamin's right fists slammed together, erupting with a dull boom like a war drum.
Not only that, the instant their fists collided, a shockwave-like blast of air erupted.
The visible airwave swept outward at astonishing speed, flinging nearby guards away like a hurricane.
The building's glass doors and nearby windows also shattered explosively under the double impact of sound waves and the air blast, sending fragments of every size flying in all directions like raindrops.
What incredible strength! Neither Richard nor Benjamin had expected the other to possess strength equal to his own, and both came to the same realization.
Benjamin especially.
After discovering that Richard's strength was no weaker than his own, he began to understand why Inessa, Aiden, and the others had been unable to take Richard down.
Through examinations of Aiden's group's corpses, Intelligence Department investigators discovered that not all of them had been killed by Richard's Masamune.
Aside from the agents whose necks had been severed by the Masamune or whose bodies had been cut in two, quite a few Mutant Agents had been killed by lightning and freezing.
Though he did not know exactly how many superpowers Richard possessed, Benjamin already knew of six.
Summon Long Blade, Flash, Repulsion, Lightning, Freezing, Super Strength! While the number of superpowers did not necessarily equate to greater strength, a mutant with so many abilities could not possibly be weak.
After realizing that Richard was even more troublesome than he had imagined, the enraged Benjamin gradually calmed down. He assumed a standard boxing stance and launched another attack.
Before joining the Department of Mutant Affairs, Benjamin had been a somewhat well-known professional boxer.
Though he had never won a championship belt, he was undoubtedly a professional boxer.
During one boxing match, when he was about to lose, he suddenly awakened the superpower known as Steel Body.
Then, before the live audience and those watching the broadcast, he threw an uppercut that no ordinary person could possibly withstand and smashed his opponent's head apart with a single punch.
The bloody scene stunned not only the spectators on site and watching the live broadcast, but even Benjamin himself.
What followed was simple.
He was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless homicide, earning himself 120 years in prison.
However, he did not remain in prison for long.
Less than a month after being sent to Mutant Prison, he was pulled out by people from the Department of Mutant Affairs.
After three months of training, he transformed from a felon convicted of first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless homicide into an agent of the Department of Mutant Affairs.
When Benjamin assumed his habitual boxing stance and attacked again, Richard had no intention of competing with him in fighting technique. The Masamune in his left hand flashed out like lightning.
Earth Shake!
The deadly and dazzling Four Consecutive Slashes flashed out, interrupting Benjamin's attack as they repeatedly carved across his body.
Screech! Screech! Screech! Screech!
Four wounds, each dozens of centimeters long, immediately appeared on Benjamin's body.
What was this?
Seeing that Benjamin had not been chopped into chunks like Inessa, Aiden, and the others, Richard decisively used Flash without hesitation and appeared more than twenty meters away.
Though he already knew Benjamin possessed Super Strength no weaker than his own, he had not expected Benjamin's physical defense to be so high that even Earth Shake could not kill him.
If it had been the pre-upgrade Earth Shake, Richard would not have been too surprised even if it had failed to cut Benjamin into several pieces.
But what he had just used was Earth Shake upgraded to Level 2.
Like the upgraded Octaslash, Earth Shake's power had also increased significantly.
Even if Benjamin's body truly had been forged from steel, Richard had been confident that he could cut him into several pieces.
Yet now, Level 2 Earth Shake had only left wounds dozens of centimeters long and one or two centimeters deep on Benjamin's body.
It had broken through his defense, but injuries of that extent were not fatal.
Like Richard, Benjamin wore an expression of surprise.
Though Steel Body granted him strength far beyond that of ordinary people.
As its name suggested, however, Steel Body's greatest ability was not Super Strength, but its astonishing defense stronger than steel.
This was the first time he had been injured since awakening Steel Body.
Just as Richard and Benjamin warily sized each other up, the ground suddenly began to tremble faintly.
Along with the tremors, a circular entrance leading directly to the Third Underground Floor appeared in the plaza before the office building.
A few seconds later, three towering robots nearly four meters tall entered Richard's sight. Their bodies were pitch-black, yellow light gleamed from their chests and eyes, and their outer surfaces appeared to be covered in scales.
Sentinel Robots? Though this was the first time he had seen them in person, Richard recognized at first glance that these three towering black robots were Sentinel Robots designed specifically to hunt mutants.
In the film Days of Future Past, only two versions of Sentinel Robots had appeared.
One was the prototype that appeared in 1973. It could fly, was made from space-age polymers, and primarily attacked targets with the Gatling Gun on its right hand.
As for the second version.
It was the Future Sentinel that appeared in the future. Created using Mystique's Shapeshifting principle, it could freely copy mutant abilities and share them with other Sentinels. It possessed advanced intelligence and coordinated combat capabilities.
The ones now before Richard were neither the 1973 prototype nor the Future Sentinels that had completely exterminated mutants. They were Third Generation Sentinels of the current era.
So these were the Department of Mutant Affairs' hole cards? The moment Richard saw the three Sentinel Robots, he knew tonight's battle would not end easily.
Before you continue