In any other scenario, Finn shouldn't have been happy about the fact that two separate armies were shooting at each other on a battlefield he stood in the middle of. Even here, he still wasn't, but it bought him a few precious seconds to make his way back to the truck.

  Because lives would be lost if he didn't. The gargantuan white-furred primebeast was getting on all fours, readying itself to trample Ernesto and the other people inside.

  He couldn't let that happen. So he got between them, going full speed to intercept. He wasn't even sure if it saw the truck, or if it had simply converged on their location in time with the Seraphim forces by following them instead. There was no way to discern how those had gotten here.

  This yeti thing was coming from the south just left of the South American army, the US mechs advanced from the north. Away from the latter, Ernesto was driving northeast to get out of the pincer attack.

  Though he could manipulate it, Finn couldn't actually travel at the speed of light, which meant he had to prioritize. And the primebeast was the most immediate threat to his objective. He didn't want to damage his body with more lasers than he had to since the damage took a considerable amount of time to heal, so he was going to meet it head-on.

  Yeah. After so long spent hiding away and dodging away from the physical monsters, he was meeting this with a tackle of his own. When he neared the beast, he began feeling its oppressive aura more clearly. It was murderous in a fundamental way, as if compelled by some higher power to be diametrically opposed to any humans it came across, intent on ending their lives.

  Probably not too far from the truth.

  It was the first time he felt a primebeast’s aura up close. The superficial colors were undercut by different ones, more oriented in a specific direction than regular animals. Repurposed. Suffice to say, there were no lingering doubts about what this predator planned to do to them.

  Due to the immense difference in weight class between them, Finn was sure to get blasted away if he just ran into it even with his enhanced body. What he needed to do was project a wave of force in order to get it out of the way and give himself some breathing room to deal with everything else going on.

  Blackening his body, he absorbed as much light as he could, simultaneously darkening the colors in front of both armies to reduce visibility. Energy conversion took place, turning it into kinetic, and Finn ran the remaining distance with accelerated strides.

  Ahead, the giant yeti bounded forward with earth-shaking steps, roaring loud enough to make the air itself tremble. He didn’t let it distract him, kicking off the ground when he was right in front of it, three stories up into its chest. Rearing both arms back, he pressed two flat palms into its fur and pushed along with his momentum to release his charge.

  Man and beast went flying in opposite directions.

  Finn crashed back into unforgiving soil, kicking up a shower of debris as he felt his skeleton crack and suffer under the harsh impact. Just because he was able to absorb light and electricity didn’t mean he could do the same with kinetic energy in any meaningful capacity. Therefore, he got thrown across the landscape like a ragdoll the moment the primebeast barreled into him. But he could quite literally just set himself straight in a moment. Carbonized and missing body mass might have been a problem, but broken bones? That was nothing. He flexed his core and fought through the pain to get back up.

  His adversary, for its part, got launched even farther. Except, it had taken zero damage whatsoever. As expected, the hairy giant merely grunted and rose again. Defeating it immediately wasn’t the goal, though. So this was fine, he’d just needed more time.

  Feeling his body heal itself from bruises, he dashed back to where he came from, behind the carrier truck full of frightened civilians. Sprinting like this was wasting a lot of accumulated energy with kinetic energy bursts. He couldn’t do it so quickly in sequence as to truly run with them, but the bounding steps he took in between his standard run did boost his speed a considerable amount.

  Bullets shot past him, never quite managing to reach him as he always swerved out of the way, sometimes by a hair's breadth. Predicting their paths was easy without aura precognition. With it? He wasn’t going to waste movement that would cost him precious time.

  The human soldiers weren’t hitting the truck, yet it seemed their tag-alongs were going to. Despite him being reasonably certain they shouldn’t have been noticeable normally, the Seraphim's summons did once they got close, perhaps sniffing out the temperature difference or something. He didn't care about the specifics. Whatever the case, the fragile deception they'd upheld was broken.

  He was dashing for the side of the truck closest to him when a crystalline canine beast leapt towards him.

  Not wanting to deal with it longer than necessary, he hit its head with a half-charged punch, wanting to conserve resources. It still shattered and its body tumbled away in the snow, only to draw from the fallen snow and reform from the neck up.

  He attempted to put down the rest of the ice summons and got similar results. A kick there, a knee there. All enough to break, but not enough to keep them down for the count. In the meantime, the humans noticed their bullets hitting something behind his back, which made them aware of the camouflaged truck. He registered the moment they realized in the auras, flares of surprise and alarm rippling out, followed by determination as they switched targets.

  Some shots were hitting the wooden paneling on the outside of the truck. Surprisingly they weren't breaking through to the other side, but that didn’t mean he was going to let them keep it up.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  They didn’t forget that they were fighting a war on two fronts. More missiles rained down from the US side, this time not instantly stopped by his lasers. Instead, the South American soldiers pulled out rocket launcher-like devices and fired those to counter. Explosions sounded above them while Finn continued to keep the hounds away, thinking about what to do next.

  Then he saw it. An enormous outline spearing him upward. He barely had time to warn Ernesto as he got out of the way himself. The ground cracked open for a towering spear of ice, so massive it tilted the landscape around it and caused some of the soldiers to lose balance, as well as the truck. Finn had braced his legs to remain stable, and turned to the source of the new attack.

  There, some distance away, the yeti stared back at him with its hand on the ground. It raised that hand again, and Finn knew another one of those spikes was coming. But not for him. His eyes widened when he saw the outline appear, and he used his power to send messages to Ernesto, directing the other guy’s driving so he wouldn’t get skewered along with everyone inside.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t focus on that anymore. The mechs had closed in, backed up by a company of foot soldiers streaming out of their transport. Both sides were now shooting at him, the truck and each other, and he had been doing his best to get the refugees out of this before. Now it was just getting to be too much.

  The weather intensified, and he used that opportunity to turn the precipitation black for additional obscuration. Which did nothing to deter the primebeast, who had apparently decided to charge at them a second time.

  Through the storming hail, a clawed hand the size of an elephant rushed at him. He hopped on top of it, then used it as a launching platform to jump towards an ice hound on the other side of the truck.

  He kicked it away unceremoniously and got ready to engage the yeti again until he noticed the aura. Multiple spikes this time that were completely unavoidable. Finn had to interrupt it. He distracted the beast with a strobe of color before using his charred hand to fire another laser.

  Not wanting to waste power on its near impenetrable hide, he aimed for the eye. It screeched in pain and closed its eyes, but Finn just redirected the beam to its open mouth, shutting it up.

  Still not enough. It would be back at it in a few seconds, if that. The other sides had never stopped firing, forcing him to duck close to the ground as he dodged a rocket and a pair of frozen jaws. But the civilians were being attacked by the mechs taking to the air and boxing the truck in. The piloted machines were capable of flight, it seemed.

  His cognition and perception were fine. He was more than capable of keeping track of every factor on the battlefield. It was his body that was lagging behind. He needed to be faster and stronger, straight up. The gap between his power and his body had shrunk, but it wasn’t gone. Far from it.

  But why was he required to put himself to the test when other people’s lives were at stake? Did these troops just not care that they were about to mow down the lives of innocent people? He had made it clear multiple times with his messages that they weren’t on either side and just needed to go, but no one was listening. Any hesitation, fear or remorse they felt was suppressed by other greater emotions. And every time one soldier stepped out of line, the commander would be there to correct them. Convincing them was a lost cause.

  Even the yeti, who was no one one’s side, didn’t deter them from warring against each other. Tactics were in place to avoid it, a distinct lack of casualties to the sprouting spikes making it obvious that Finn wasn’t the only one with ways to avoid getting hit. These militaries were clearly used to fighting even with an unreasonably tough third party on the field.

  Ridiculous.

  As soon as he saw one of the flying mechs lift an arm at the truck, he read the aura of the pilot it belonged to and observed an attack he didn’t want Ernesto to deal with. Finn feinted a laser, pointing fingers that glowed with none of the offensive heat, serving to distract. It worked, the mech swerved and hit him with sparking bolts of plasma. But he was prepared.

  Grounding the lightning with a predetermined pathway made using nanite formations, he drew on the blast's energy to distribute it and used the electricity on his nervous system. He had to draw a bit on the reality enhancing aspect of his power, making himself ever so slightly more durable not to fry himself as he tried this. While he had known it was possible in theory, he hadn’t been confident in pulling it off without killing himself. But here in this moment he didn’t have a choice. He made his muscles contract far beyond their natural limit, held together by his power and nanites, prepared to explode into action.

  He channeled light again, throughout his entire body, not into a single point. The glow began to shine underneath his skin, lighting up his veins and contrasting against the reddish pink lines of his subcutaneous veins and nerves. It would go through his clothes too, but that was no issue. His goal wasn't to burn; it was brightness.

  The world flashed with blinding light.

  He didn’t wait for anyone to react and started moving with the residual energy he spent on kinetic bursts to speed up faster than ever before. His feet took him to his first target so rapidly that he barely had time to raise his fist before the guy was down. He didn’t stop. Seraphim’s army first.

  As fast as he passed them, he destroyed their weapons and dealt vicious crippling blows left and right. Not a single inaccuracy. Once they began to change positions, he was already on the other side of the frontline fighters, none of them capable of even perceiving his rush.

  Shards of metal and gunpowder burst out together with snow the instant he leaped towards the mechs in the air, jumping from one to the other and hitting key components that took them out of the fight before any shields could be raised.

  He used the last one as a platform to get to the other side of soldiers. These ones had no idea what hit them either. He brought them down just as easily, not caring about their gadgets or and equipment that didn’t have a chance in hell of keeping up with him.

  When they were all down, he had crossed half the distance to the confused yeti. He gathered his remaining power in his arm, not focusing anything on protection. Upon getting close enough he went for the chest again, his burnt fist hitting it in the chest with such force, his arm disappeared in a misty red cloud. The beast itself got blown back from the impact, sailing out of his range.

  With his stored energy expended, the light dissipated. The stump under his right shoulder left a trail of red he could see as he fell down. Landing on bent knees, he looked around at what he had done.

  All in less than two minutes.

  And for a moment, Finn stood there, panting.

  No one could stop him from getting out of here. Not 361 soldiers. Not eight cutting-edge combat machines. Not a colossal-class primebeast.

  No one.

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