Hao Ren quickly discovered that the Examiner's service pistol was unsuited for dealing with the situation before him—not because it was too weak, but because it was too powerful!
A single shot from this thing could create a crystalized zone with a maximum radius of ten meters, and its range was enough to hit anything in Hao Ren's line of sight. Using it in a town where the residents had not yet fully evacuated could easily cause accidental injuries. On top of that, the crystallized dust produced by the Examiner's service pistol carried a certain amount of radiation, making contact with it extremely dangerous for untrained civilians. In the end, he had no choice but to put the pistol away and deal with those tentacles the most primitive way possible: melee combat.
Fortunately, with the shield holding, it was not too difficult.
He found a suitable weapon in his portable space: an alloy spear with a sharp tip. It was not made by the Empire, but a souvenir he had taken when he left the Erem Elves. It was one of the melee weapons used by those elven soldiers. He had received no relevant training, but relying on his enhanced physique, far beyond that of ordinary humans, he could still swing the two-meter-long alloy spear with tremendous force.
The wind howled beside his ears. Hao Ren nimbly dodged a tentacle whipping toward him from behind, then, at the last possible moment, drove the alloy spear into its middle. A tremendous force surged through his hands as the tentacle sensed the attack and frantically recoiled, trying to fling its attacker away. Hao Ren's entire body was lifted into the air. Yet he did not panic in the slightest. Instead, he twisted a short handle at the end of the alloy spear.