It was just over three and a half paces between floors including the space in between. She started on the 99th floor and her target was the 417th. A bit more than a longstride away. Yuriko’s leap crossed nearly fifty paces up and as she kicked off against the wall, coupled with her Animakinesis pulling and pushing against the wall, she crossed the longstride in less than a minute.

Despite that, the response came faster than she expected. Midway to the top, drones popped out of the walls. Sparks blasted from the spire and the floating orbs absorbed and channelled the energy into a deadly beam of corruscating light. Yuriko felt it enter her perception zone and quickly judged the beam to be mostly harmless. But she still dodged to the side and let it strike the wall beside her instead of allowing it to break her disguise.

As she continued her leap, she looked back, aimed with her assault rifle and let loose.

Ratatatat!

Bullets guided by intent shattered the drone, but more spilt out of the open tubes. But the spire could only empower one at a time, and at the rate of once a second. She zigged and zagged, but didn’t let her evasion slow her by more than a few seconds. Once she judged her elevation was at the proper floors, she repeated her earlier feat of slicing the wall, then kicked it in. She ducked inside just before the multicolour beam sliced past her space. Some of it spilt into the hallway, along with a hefty amount of ambient energy.

Typically, she would have inhaled all of it and processed it into Animus, but she chose not to. Well, her outer reserves were lacking a tiny bit, so she siphoned some energy through her Anima. Her armour had some vents that would allow air through, and it was more than enough to hide her Anima along the suit’s channels.

The hallway was still within the central area and the floor labels were near the stairs and lifts. She ran towards the closest one, and a glance told her she’d missed the mark by half a dozen floors. She ran into the stairwell, violating the one-way policy, causing even more alarms to blare. And by the second storey, metal barriers dropped in front of her. She cut through them with three Invisible Edges even as she disrupted the security cameras. There were also connections emerging from the blank walls that she missed. That one opened up into a machine gun turret that started blasting her with bullets.

It let out its fusillade for half a second before she cut it apart. The bullets bounced off her armour, though she still had to brace herself from the kinetic energy transferred through the metal. It didn’t delay her more than a fraction of a second, though that still allowed more turrets, ceilings, and wall hidden, to open up and unleash.

Swish. Thunk. Swish! Thunk!

By the time she arrived at the correct floor, she’d left nearly twenty broken turrets. She kicked the door off its hinges and entered the corporate floor. The alarm continued blarings, and as soon as she exited the central area, no more turrets popped out of hiding. Instead, she found a couple of guardsmen at the end of the corridor aiming their weapons at her.

Blam! Blam!

They wielded shotguns that sprayed pellets in a wide cone, encompassing the entirety of the corridor. They struck her armour and were stopped by the condensed aura she kept infused into the steel. Her armour was unmarked, though perhaps she should have allowed it. Not that it mattered now.

She leapt towards them, assault rifle blazing. Their armour stymied her bullets, but it was only a cover for her approach. They continued to blast away, but when she came close enough to punch, they tried to escape. Grinning to herself, she increased her speed to the point where neither their eyes nor the cameras could catch sight of her. Then she folded both of them with a heavy fist to the gut. Their armour cratered and cracked. She saw blood spatter from their mouths and both guards collapsed in a heap. Alive, but wounded. They could probably live if they received medical attention. But they wouldn’t stand against her again, of that she made sure. Terror blasted from her Mien, and they both froze up for a moment, then fainted.

With a bit of time on her hands, she checked the floor map on her HUD. The data wasn’t updated live. All she needed was the layout anyway.

Her perception aura spread out, thicker than she normally used it, making it slightly visible. Her reach was at two hundred fifty paces, reduced from three hundred because of holding Damien’s memories, but she could stretch her perception up to three times that by ignoring half of the sphere. Since she was in the centre of the building, or close enough that it didn’t matter, she could sweep all the way to the walls.

Her perception filled all the space within the floor, forcibly interacted with anything that had ‘Chronian Gear and slipped through the gaps between the doors. She also used the air ventilation system, which allowed her to reach even locked rooms. Anyone with ‘chronian felt her intrusion, and she pressed down on all of them. The entire floor was leased by Malta Industries anyway.

Two thousand three hundred twenty-four individuals, most of whom were office workers. A hundred were guards of some sort, and maybe a dozen were inside large offices. The forceful intrusion didn’t give her much detail so she couldn’t be sure which one Armando was, but she spotted what could have been the bodyguard. It was the only one that towered head and shoulders over everyone else and looked twice as wide. How it fit in the corridors, she didn’t know. There were three people with the bodyguard. The office was towards the eastern side of the building, at the edge, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Dragon Fall City. That was it.

She exited the central area on the western side, and the fastest way to get to the east was to punch through the centre again. She didn’t do it, however, not wanting to damage the spire and cause more trouble to—hopefully—innocent people. Instead, she burst right back inside the internal walkways and ran around clockwise, then kicked through one of the eastern doors.

Security forces were slow. She tracked them easily and avoided them, not wanting to slow down. She monitored the three men in the office and the bodyguard…eh, two men? There should have been three.

She pressed down harder, and the third man appeared as a spherical blob, his Anima fighting against hers. One of the other men was rushing towards the desk set a couple of paces from the windows, while the last one was frozen stiff. The bodyguard moved towards the door.

There was no direct path to that room. She’d have to go through a few turns and intersections. Security forces were gathering at a couple of intersections, but she bypassed the uncoordinated blockade easily.

The man with the active Anima tried to push her perception away while trying to stab into hers with a condensed spike. It penetrated her aura by a quarter of an inch before the point ground down and she focused on the intrusion point and crushed it. For a brief moment, she felt an attempt at communication, but she barred it from reaching her.

Recognising an Ancient, and probably the one who attacked Gwendith, Yuriko crushed him down into the carpet with the sheer weight of her Anima. Smothered him for the few moments it took her to arrive at the office, but he regained his consciousness by the time she was before the ornate, wooden double doors. There were a couple of guards, but she slammed them into the walls, broke a couple of limbs and left them there.

The doors slammed open by the force of her Anima, and she walked inside. Her target was the one by the desk, and he was hastily keying in a passcode into a numerical pad. His gaze shifted between the pad and her, his eyes a mixture of irritation and anger.

The Ancient was off to the side, his face ground into the carpet. The last person was a corporate drone of some sort. The bodyguard was in the middle of the room.

Now it was right in front of her. Yuriko blinked at its speed, startled that she barely tracked him. A hand holding a knife, white-hot metal blade, stabbed towards her core. She stepped aside smoothly, but its movement sped up and altered the stabbing trajectory. She caught the blade with condensed Anima, then flicked her finger at it. An Invisible Edge a couple of paces long cut into the torso and dug a furrow several inches deep into the armour. Surprisingly, it hadn’t been able to cut straight through, and the cross-section she saw revealed why.

Ossifrum-steel alloy. That was what made up the internals of the powered armour, and probably the underlayer. She wasn’t sure if the bodyguard was a robot or one whose entire body had been replaced by ‘Chronian Gear…no, it was the latter. She could feel a powerful Anima within the artificial muscle and sinew. It wasn’t a powerful infusion, but it worked smoothly after years of use.

The bodyguard’s other hand popped out a long blade hidden within the forearm, then slammed down her head. The blade vibrated so quickly that a hum filled the air, deafeningly loud.

Yuriko slapped the blade away, though it caught her assault rifle in the process, ruining it. Oh well.

Hidden compartments opened on the torso, on the upper legs, and over the shoulders. Lead bullets, magnetically accelerated needles, and superheated plasma, were all unloaded at her. Rather than block, she sidestepped and avoided all of the projectiles, though, in the process, the bodyguard destroyed the floor behind her.

Flames, wooden shrapnel, and water burst out of the flooring. The bodyguard repeated the assault, attempting to turn to where she went, but unceremoniously halted its attack. She was now between it and its principal. If it blasted its guns and she dodged, it would kill Armando Malta for her. A pity its reflexes were fast enough to avoid that fate, or perhaps it was hardcoded into its body.

Another second passed. Armando was still inputting whatever code was on the numpad. The bodyguard accelerated faster, but now that Yuriko paid attention, its speed outside of surprise wasn’t something to be worried about.

Flick. Flick. Flick.

Three Invisible Edges layered to strike the same point.

Swish. Clunk.

The bodyguard split in half from shoulder to hip and fell to the floor. Sparks danced from the severed parts, and the cross-section showed that it was entirely mechanical. Its face was mostly a featureless plate save for a couple of lights that passed for its eye display. The lights didn’t waver. The arm still connected to the head rose and pointed towards her, the forearm peeled back and revealed a pointed, cylindrical object that had fins at the end. The tail ignited and blasted towards her, but before she could cut it out of the air, it exploded into a giant fireball.

The heat and flames washed over her without harm, but it took a few seconds for the light and smoke to disperse enough for her to see. Of course, her Anima perception remained of use. Whatever Armando was doing, he finished inputting the code. He dropped into a tube beneath his feet.

Yuriko caught his falling body with her kinesis and dragged him right out of his escape chute.

Then she cut his head off.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep