Philos Owen...
Lin Xiu chose to commit the name to memory.
Only, he had no idea where the man had gotten such a misunderstanding about him and the beautiful girl beside him. Nor did he understand what could have driven the man to end his own life in such a manner.
Li Wei expressionlessly closed the eyes of Owen and Carl.
After a bullet blasted open the warehouse lock, they had no time to ponder the motives of the dead, for the crisis was far from over.
Rumble—
A roar rose from behind, sounding like the ancient steam machinery of the punk era, a harbinger of some massive entity breaking through a door.
Li Wei vigilantly gripped Lin Xiu's left hand with her own, while the Jiaoxin in her right hand shifted form, the short-stiletto dagger instantly transforming into a Donghuang Mo Dao in the Witch's grasp.
"A Mo Dao? Isn't this... Huadi's metallurgical technology?"
According to Lin Xiu's deduction, any magic capable of achieving such an effect had to be related to metallic material science, incorporating ancient metallurgical techniques and the like. (And subsequent conversations with Li Wei after the battle would prove his deduction was practically spot on.)
The boy also assumed a combat stance, the pupil of his left eye flaring with a crimson blood-red once again. He began to slowly regulate his breathing to focus on meeting the ambush.
Another deafening crash.
A symphony of colliding machinery accompanied the trembling surrounding walls, filling them with a bad premonition.
"You shouldn't be scared, right? In all likelihood, this is something like the anti-magic powered armor Yuyu Kami intended to research. Given how little time has passed, it can only be a semi-finished product."
Li Wei turned her head to say to Lin Xiu, magic runes blooming ever brighter in the palm of her right hand.
The outer rim resembled the shape of a hexagram, but the octagonal shape in the center looked like the Bagua diagram from Eastern Daoism.
Debris constantly rained down from the basement ceiling, the crushed stones bouncing completely away the moment they touched the barrier shield suspended around them.
"What kind of magic is this again?" The boy pointed at the light shield in front of and above him.
"It has nothing to do with you. Just stay close to me. Also, what sort of level is your pupil technique, roughly?"
"…Is it too late to say I'm actually not a Pupil Master?"
Lin Xiu took a deep breath, speaking a joking remark in a serious tone.
"You bastard, pulling this on me right now… Oh well, don't blame me when we get back and I make you sleep on the couch."
"？Why?"
Just as the two were bickering, the center of the warehouse door shattered as if blown apart, the immense impact cracking Li Wei's Hexagram Barrier.
"Not good! Run with me!"
As her voice fell, a massive mechanical arm thrust out from the billowing dust. Silver-gray heavy metal and edges that looked fiercely sharp were the highlights of this mammoth-like mecha.
And the most crucial point.
It was clearly lunging straight for the Witch and the Tongyan who had turned to run.
The speed of its ejection was clearly more than double or triple that of human legs, and what's more, that gigantic mechanical arm carried anti-magic armor-piercing rounds.
Even a talented Witch like Li Wei would find it difficult to withstand this perfectly.
The earth-shaking commotion felt like it was meant to tear the entire building down.
As the full body of the mecha emerged from the warehouse, Lin Xiu noticed something amiss with his surroundings—his Mystic Eyes captured a fleeting silhouette.
It had appeared alongside the Anti-Magic Mecha.
"No... something's wrong... It's about to catch up. There's a dead end ahead. When I say jump, I'll push you to the other side, and then we'll find an opportunity from two directions to fight this lump of iron."
As she spoke, Li Wei's grip grew tighter and tighter.
Was it a subconscious protective urge? Or was she simply excessively nervous...
"My hand... too tight."
The boy casually brought it up, causing a strange, bashful flush to spread across the white-haired Witch's face.
"Ah!!!"
Lin Xiu felt a pain as if his hand were being pinched—Li Wei was digging her nails in.
"Stop talking nonsense, I was just afraid you'd pull some reckless stunt and get yourself killed. Alright, follow my lead."
The Witch chanted a few spells under her breath, and her white hair began to move against the airflow and gravity as if she could control its direction at will.
She continuously fed the information from behind back to her master. —Something big is coming.
For a Magician, hair is an important magical medium, much like how alchemists in the fourteenth century also used hair as a material.
"Huh? How come it feels like there's no movement behind us anymore?" Lin Xiu's perceptual ability was by no means inferior to magic, just far too shallow.
For a Pupil Master with zero combat experience, many of the auxiliary innate talents often misled them due to a misinterpretation of the information provided.
"Idiot! Get ready to jump to the side!"
Li Wei's sudden shout granted the boy an unexpected burst of leaping potential.
The high-speed mechanical fist ejecting from behind at 20 meters per second declared that the silence just now had merely been the dawn before the storm.
Bang! Clang!
Slash-slash-slash-slash-slash—
The mechanical fist wedged directly into the already-penetrated rubble wall. But the Anti-Magic Mecha had more than one arm; its other arm was already scanning for the two escaping targets within the field of view of the mecha's central processing system.
Using his momentum from running, Lin Xiu aimed for a side glass-paneled soundproof booth and made a flying leap, stubbornly shattering the barrier and rolling three and a half times before crashing to the ground near the wall.
Shards of glass and dirt were churned together, leaving Lin Xiu unable to see a thing, including Li Wei, who had saved his life.
"Li Wei! Li Wei!!!"
Has it really come down to me having to act on my own? As a Witch, Li Wei will definitely be fine.
As for me, a combat novice, I really can't say whether I can go toe-to-toe with this lump of iron.
The moment Lin Xiu clambered to his feet, he unluckily locked eyes with the mecha. After two seconds of mutual staring, the mechanical arm embedded in the wall activated its collapse-pulse machine gun for a firefight.
"Equipment Sp556-31 has been initiated, target acquired. Prepare to open fire!"
Perhaps all the budget went into the combat system, because the speech system inexplicably adopted a jarring, eerie mechanical voice.
And that wasn't even the most abstract part.
Lin Xiu never expected that the already-jammed mechanical arm would also deploy tracking flying blades. The material of these blades had been specially researched; it was a synthetic metal that both modern and ancient magic struggled to destroy directly.
Yet, lamentably, the very first battle after "its" birth was not against the Magicians it was designed to counter, but against a countered Pupil Master.
Lin Xiu braved a hail of bullets, weaving through the interconnected cubicles as flying lead shattered glass and fragile wooden crates in the corners.
The terrifying flying blades possessed the momentum to sever any object at the waist, cutting through reinforced concrete walls as they chased down the boy.
"The distance is about fifteen meters, and I can roughly judge the deflection angle of the machine gun bullets using my pupil technique."
So, as long as he found the right angle, he could make the machine gun bullets strike the pursuing anti-magic flying blades and deflect them back toward the mecha itself.
————————
Meanwhile, on the other side.
Li Wei was similarly trapped in the dust and smoke, but to a Witch, that naturally mattered little.
Through clairvoyance, she could easily move through the fog.
"That guy... why is all the firepower concentrated over there?" Li Wei calmly analyzed the current distribution of combatants.
This Anti-Magic Mecha's vision could penetrate shallow smoke. Yet, as for her own presence, as long as it couldn't analyze movement traces not generated by the mecha itself, she could remain permanently invisible within it.
Lin Xiu had drawn the absolute firepower on the flank, which meant that on her side, she could definitely launch a fatal strike.
The Witch thought with confidence.
"But when all is said and done... this guy really doesn't let people rest easy..."
She touched the bracelet on her right wrist again, feeling the fluctuating energy. An energy different from magic, an energy different from mechanical power.
———It ought to belong to a Pupil Master.
Sizz-sizz-sizz...
Sizz-sizz-sizz...
"Second target detected! Activating emergency defense module!"