Chapter 23
When their enemy appeared, they immediately pointed their guns at his aloof figure, cold sweat streaming down their faces.
"Raise your hands immediately..."
The commander instinctively issued the warning out of habit.
His aged face flushed. Against such a lawless, extremist Mutant who had caused a nuclear disaster, a warning like that was meaningless.
"Open fire!!"
Bang!!
The uneven bursts of gunfire rang out, showing how panicked everyone was.
Many were breathing erratically, their scalps tingling and their bodies trembling.
Of course they were!!
This was a monster who had walked out of a nuclear blast unscathed!
What good would bullets do?
But the soldiers, who had come to cordon off the scene and maintain order, were in a difficult position too. Suddenly faced with such a terrifying situation, they could only obey their officers' orders and keep firing at the figure walking toward them.
Whoosh!!
Bullet after bullet tore through the air, flying toward him.
Invisible ripples of telekinetic power gathered in front of him, stopping every bullet. With a thought from Su Chen, the bullets rapidly accelerated toward the soldiers hastily forming ranks nearby.
Pffft!!
The sound of bullets piercing flesh rang out again and again.
The soldiers in front of him fell in quick succession.
Suddenly.
Shells from long-barreled artillery vehicles came blasting toward him, howling through the air. The large-caliber shells landed all around Su Chen, carrying tremendous impact.
"Cover him with a barrage!!"
Boom!!
Shell after shell, each powerful enough to demolish a building, exploded around Su Chen.
Scorching flames, immense blasts of heat, and metal jets made up of countless fragments burst forth around him.
Under normal circumstances, Su Chen could have used his telekinesis to avoid it all.
But at this moment, his body, having completely released all the nuclear blast energy within it, was empty. Su Chen needed energy from outside to replenish it.
The invisible ripples surrounding him began devouring every form of energy around him, including heat and kinetic energy. The suction was so astonishing that even the light warped.
[Energy manipulation +5] [Energy manipulation +5]
The system he had constructed quickly reported the improvement in his ability.
"Here it comes."
A faint light flickered in Su Chen's eyes.
He raised both hands, and two blasts of light began building in his palms.
The next instant.
Boom!!!
The dazzling blasts condensed into terrifying beams of energy, carving a horrifying chasm through the ground. They engulfed the distant artillery vehicles and soldiers, destroying the vehicles and killing the men.
In that short span of time, the troops who had been first to arrive to maintain order were wiped out, their unit completely eliminated.
A satellite far out in space captured the scene clearly.
As a result, the entire country raised its alert level to the highest.
"Deploy S.H.I.E.L.D. immediately!"
"Send out all the special forces."
"I don't care how you do it. Before today is over, I want to see this extremist Mutant shedding tears of repentance before this land. I want him dead and without a place to be buried!"
The president erupted in anger and issued his latest orders.
PS: Thanks to 'Wandering Qualification' for the 100 tip!!.
Chapter 23
The boy who had walked out of the nuclear blast had casually wiped out an entire biochemical unit.
Soon.
The national alert level was raised to the highest.
Su Chen, the Chinese boy who had managed to set off a nuclear explosion on American soil, was directly upgraded from an S-class global fugitive to SSS-class.
As the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, S.H.I.E.L.D. also dispatched a rapid-response force and classified Su Chen as a special-grade threat. This meant that anyone below level-nine agent clearance could not access his file.
"Contact Iron Man Tony..."
Nick Fury, the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., immediately contacted the superhero who had been in the spotlight lately.
Ever since Tony Stark had successfully resolved the trouble within his corporation and announced to the world that he was Iron Man, he had been thriving, becoming the most popular superhero overnight.
In these difficult times, the people needed a hero!!
The people needed someone to step forward.
They needed this utterly evil outlaw brought to justice, or swiftly killed!
After all, even the most brazen extremist Mutant of the past, the Brotherhood's leader, the famous Magneto, had never accomplished such a feat.
Magneto himself had even been captured by the military and held in an underground prison for a time.
Damn it!!
With the eyes of the entire world upon him, this boy had acted so lawlessly, setting off a nuclear explosion at close range on the mainland. No one could tolerate such a humiliating disgrace.
This boy had to be taken down!
Special personnel were swiftly dispatched from across the country to Washington, D.C.
Whoosh!!
High above the East Coast, more than a dozen Raptor fighter jets swept past the coast and headed toward the nuclear blast site at supersonic speed.
"Fire authorized."
This was a fighter squadron under the Atlantic Seventh Force.
They had set out directly from an aircraft carrier far out at sea and quickly reached the battlefield.
Though few in number, this flight formation alone carried enough explosive warheads and flew at a swift enough supersonic speed to suppress a small country, fighting its way back and forth across its territory at will.
But now, they faced a problem.
Would their firepower be enough to suppress a boy who had survived a nuclear explosion?
They didn't know.
But their most important mission was to hold the enemy back, slow his advance, and keep him confined to this area.
"Fire!"
After receiving authorization, the fighter pilots activated their launch systems.
Click!!
A mounted missile launcher popped out from beneath each Raptor's weapons bay. In less than a second, the missiles' tail engines ignited fully, and the mounting mechanisms released them.
Whoosh!
The missiles streaked across the sky, carrying out a precision bombardment of the target on the ground.
"Fighter jets?"
Su Chen looked up into the sky.
As a child, he had dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot too.
Watching the missiles approach, Su Chen's eyes turned icy. With a single thought, his telekinetic power seemed to become an invisible giant hand, catching the swift missiles in midair.
Boom!!
He crushed the missiles out of thin air.
But in an instant.
More and more missiles came flying from the horizon, rapidly approaching from tiny black dots in the distance until their warheads were upon him.
"Is that all?"
Su Chen raised his right hand and lightly swatted at the air beside him.
Though he had clearly struck at empty air, the seemingly pointless gesture had a remarkably strange effect.
The missiles approaching from afar began to tilt. In an instant, they veered completely off course and, pulled by an invisible force, fell toward the ground in the distance.
Boom!!
The capital's urban area was bombarded by its own missiles. Several tall buildings collapsed, and orange-red flames rose into the sky.
"Damn it!!"
A pilot cursed under his breath.
They had not expected the enemy's strange telekinetic ability to deflect every incoming missile so easily.
"This will only cause more innocent casualties."
"Stall for half a minute, then everyone return to base."
They had never expected this flight formation to eliminate the boy.
Their original intention had only been to delay him. With the advantage of altitude and supersonic speed, they hardly needed to worry about attacks from the enemy on the ground.
But their thinking had been a little too simple.
After firing their missiles, several Raptors roared through the air above Su Chen's head. The sound of their engines reverberated through the sky, making the indifferent boy frown.
At first, he really did not have many ways to deal with fighter jets.
They were too fast and too high.
Of course, they had no way to counter him either.
"But they're still too noisy."
A trace of killing intent appeared on Su Chen's cold, merciless face. He simply could not stand the sound of supersonic engines roaring back and forth through the air beside his ears.
It put him in a somewhat bad mood.
As the saying went, turning to the dark side made you ten times stronger, while turning good made you three parts weaker.
After Su Chen's state of mind had completely changed and he had embraced the abyss, his use of his abilities had become increasingly effortless.
"Let them fall."
Buzz!!!
It was as though his words had become law.
A ripple of invisible power began to interfere with reality.