Chapter Ninety-Seven: One Punch, One Slash

“Damage to abdominal armor has reached forty percent. Overall mobility impaired. Power transmission efficiency reduced by twenty-one percent...”

With a thunderous crash, he slammed hard into the ground. Jarvis’s alarm rang out almost at the same instant, and the long string of damage reports left Tony somewhat dazed.

He forced up the body that was on the verge of falling apart and looked up, only to see a scene he could not make sense of no matter how hard he tried.

That tin-clad man, with no visible flight system at all, was actually floating there so easily in midair.

How was that possible? What was he using to fly? There was no sign of any energy emitter anywhere...

Though his mind was full of questions, Tony understood that this was hardly the right moment for thought or study. The single punch from that crude iron suit had almost instantly given him a taste of the hostility pouring from his opponent.

This was no easy mark.

Tony stripped away all his flippancy and contempt and began to take the fight seriously.

Whoosh—

The Mark II’s formidable flight capability was unleashed at once. Tony shot upward like a rocket, flashing into the sky in the blink of an eye... but he was clever enough to deliberately keep his distance from Zhong Shenxiu.

Jarvis’s analysis had told him that the other man’s iron armor had no real long-range attack methods.

And the shadow left by that close-quarters punch was simply too deep... Tony did not dare get close to Zhong Shenxiu again.

So he chose the safest method of combat.

Long-range repulsor fire.

Hnnng—

Tony raised an arm, and with the familiar charging sound, the palm cannon in his hand finished preparing.

In an instant, a white-blue energy beam that seemed almost tangible surged violently toward Zhong Shenxiu!

On the opposite side, the moment Tony suddenly rose from the ground into the air, Zhong Shenxiu had already been driving chaos magic toward him...

But then Zhong Shenxiu discovered that in midair, the mechanical armor on his body could not offset its own weight through the built-in power system.

That meant he was flying with an additional two hundred kilograms strapped to him.

His speed simply could not match Tony’s.

And with Tony already charging his laser cannon again, Zhong Shenxiu made a decision in that lightning flicker of a moment: he gave up on closing the distance and instead dropped back to the ground, intending to rely on his agility to evade the beam.

But it was still a little too late.

Those two hundred kilograms of metal were simply too heavy. In a moment of carelessness, Zhong Shenxiu was struck by the laser cannon.

Boom—

The white-blue beam of light mercilessly slammed into the magical shield surrounding Zhong Shenxiu.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle.

A shower of energy sparks danced and jumped in frenzy!

At last, after a long while, Tony’s fully charged laser cannon finally vanished as the energy dispersed.

By then, Zhong Shenxiu realized with alarm that the magical shield which had remained unmoved even after enduring so much gunfire before now showed faint signs of shattering.

He quickly replenished the magic once more.

Then he looked toward Tony, who hovered in the air.

It had to be said: this fellow was truly a genius. In just one month, he had managed to create such a powerful weapon.

If Zhong Shenxiu had known Tony would come, he would have had Ivan equip the mechanical armor with flight capability long ago.

At the very least, it would not drag him down in midair; with the aid of chaos magic, he would be able to keep up with Tony’s speed.

But adding such a complicated function as flight would inevitably prolong their preparation time... and the reason Zhong Shenxiu had been in such a rush at the beginning, determined to finish all robbery preparations within one month, had also had something to do with Tony. He had originally thought that if time dragged on too long, Tony would invent the Iron Armor, which would become a nuisance of no small size.

Yet unexpectedly, after all that frantic racing against time, Tony had actually rushed the steel armor into existence within a single month.

Sigh... in the end, who could say why Tony built it so quickly?

It was somewhat beyond Zhong Shenxiu’s plans.

Now, watching that fly in the sky like a fly, while his hand continued to charge the laser cannon again and again, Zhong Shenxiu felt he needed to find a way to break the deadlock.

They could not keep wearing each other down like this.

His magic recovered quickly enough, but at this rate it would eventually be exhausted. What was more, as time passed, there was no telling whether any other surprises like the Mark II might suddenly appear.

And so Zhong Shenxiu’s gaze toward Tony grew steadily more serious...

Boom boom boom boom—

Seeing that his combat plan was working, Tony immediately repeated the tactic. A barrage of laser cannon fire, as though it cost nothing at all, rained fiercely down on Zhong Shenxiu.

Very quickly...

That thing resembling an electromagnetic energy shield began to show cracks.

Tony’s spirits surged at once, and he increased the output still further.

After several rounds of ferocious firepower,

Tony noticed that the tin man seemed to have resigned himself to defeat, and simply stood there motionless. Under the barrage of laser fire, the damage to the iron armor grew greater and greater, spreading wider and wider.

Soon, Jarvis’s data analysis showed that the other man’s mechanical armor had been completely ruined and could no longer possibly retain any mobility.

At that point, Tony, who rarely ever looked so solemn, returned to his former arrogance.

A complete victory!

He stopped firing the laser cannon, lowered his altitude a little, and still looked down from above at the nearly wrecked tin man with a mocking smile.

“Your mech is so old-fashioned I’d think it was a relic from the last century.”

“Now, do you want to talk? Who sent you?”

Hnnng—

As he spoke, Tony also charged the palm cannon in his hand as a warning.

But the heap of iron debris opposite him remained utterly still...

“Quit pretending. I can tell there’s someone inside by thermal imaging. Save your little tricks—they won’t fool me,” Tony taunted mercilessly.

“If you still won’t speak, then I’ll—”

Before Tony could finish the threat, all at once he noticed a blinding red flash bursting from the wreckage of iron.

Zhong Shenxiu moved.

Since the mechanical armor was a burden, Zhong Shenxiu simply discarded it outright. It was a little unfair to Ivan, but that did not matter; when he got back, he would buy Ivan’s father a few bottles of Jiang Xiaobai to make amends.

Rapid Burst, the upgraded chaos-magic version of Swift Feet: three hundred percent. Thunder-Cleaving Blade, five hundred mana. Thunder-Piercing Spear, forty mana!

With those buffs stacked on him, Zhong Shenxiu’s entire body was covered by the chaos magic of Rapid Burst, until he became a human-shaped mass completely wrapped in red light.

At a speed Tony could not possibly react to, just as Tony’s whole body stiffened in shock and he instinctively tried to dodge,

Zhong Shenxiu’s attack had already reached him.

The Thunder-Cleaving Blade instantly pierced Tony’s abdominal armor!

The Thunder-Piercing Spear followed a split second later, opening a gaping hole in Tony’s abdomen at point-blank range. Fragments of intestine and stinking blood burst forth at once.

At the same time, Zhong Shenxiu used the force of the strike to condense chaos magic into a blade, then layered on a high-speed vibration buff.

Like cutting tofu, he severed Tony’s right arm from the armor in the blink of an eye.

One punch, one slash.

In an instant, Zhong Shenxiu crushed him, and the battle was over...