Raising Aegis up, I swatted the foul beast away. There was a loud thud, a feral snarl of pain, and a shuddering impact up my arms before the Chimera wheeled to the side, rolling back to bellow hatefully at me with its distorted leonine features.
There was another crack, Lin Xue unleashing a second bolt of lightning that struck the monster in the jaw and caused it to yelp in pain, retreating as it clutched its face. The stink of singed fur told me that Lin Xue's weapon finally had an effect.
"I see." Lin Xue had also drawn a similar conclusion. "I can't just hit any random spot. It's too well protected. I have to aim for its weak points."
"I'll create an opening for you to hit it from range!" I yelled as I charged in, Aegis floating in front of me and keeping pace.
"Don't be reckless!"
"Don't worry! I have my trusty shield!" I grinned and nodded to my relic. "Aegis! For the empire, toast that bastard!"
"…"
There was a second of silence before Aegis sighed telepathically in my head.
"Commander, you're sadly mistaken if you expect me to be some super loli who does all the fighting for you. I told you, I'm just a semiautonomous tool. I cannot make any decisions or do anything by myself. I am entirely at your disposal. I exist only to be used by you. There is a reason why I had you undergo all that training for the past six point eight five months. I can provide support as your weapon or your defensive armament, but you will have to do the physical fighting yourself."
"I know. I'm just throwing shade at a certain protagonist who is supposed to be the emperor of a super-advanced galactic empire, but conveniently have loli generals do all the fighting for him while he safely stands from a distance and simply gives orders from afar."
"Are you seriously breaking the fourth wall and making stupid web novel references during a time like this?!" Lin Xue shrieked, rounding the perimeter of the clearing and firing a well-aimed shot that blasted off a chunk of burning fur from the furiously roaring Chimera. It turned to pounce on her, but I intercepted it, lifting up Aegis and hammering the shield into its gut before it could land.
The creature fell, winded, and I smashed its face into the ground. Unfortunately, it was more durable than the Saurian, and I only succeeded in breaking its nose. It growled and struck vengefully with its scorpion tail, but the stinger glanced harmlessly off Aegis, the hovering shield having detached from my hand and moved protectively between us.
I seized the opportunity to kick the Chimera in the throat, right below the mane and its jaw. It gurgled and fell back, choking and gasping, but I wasn't able to deliver any finishing blow because it swiped at me with its deadly talons to force me to keep a distance.
The Chimera lurched forward to pursue me as I hopped backward, but another bolt of lightning seared into its face, almost blinding it. Hell, I swore that Lin Xue actually hit it in the eyes, but even that direct blow didn't melt its eyes.
Just what the hell was this thing made of?
I smacked its jaws aside with my shield when it charged toward Lin Xue, interposing myself between them. While it reeled, Lin Xue poured more lightning down its throat. The Chimera howled and convulsed, coughing as smoke billowed from its mouth when its insides were cooked. As if to add insult to injury, I hammered it in the chin with my shield and sent it sprawling back.
However, I was forced to dive to the side when its tail lashed out, stabbing through a thick tree trunk and reducing it to splinters. Its follow-up slash almost eviscerated it, but Aegis intercepted the claws for me, saving me from a grisly death.
"This thing's kind of sturdy," I muttered. "It just won't die."
"We need more firepower." Lin Xue sighed as she aimed her lightning gun again. "If you can buy me enough time, I should be able to charge up enough voltage to incinerate the whole thing."
"How long do you need?"
"…maybe three minutes."
"Consider it done."
Lin Xue immediately rubbed her hands around the handle of her gun, electricity pulsing through her delicate-looking body. Lightning flared out in white flashes, burning the grass and leaves around her and leaving blackened bark on nearby trees.
"Whoa."
Even from this distance, I could feel my hair standing on end.
The Chimera instinctively sensed the danger that Lin Xue posed and desperately lunged at her, but I stubbornly stood between them like a rock, refusing to budge an inch.
"Aegis!"
"Understood."
My shield had called herself a "semiautonomous tool." Though she appeared to possess her own personality, existing as a support AI that could offer tactical advice, her functions were heavily limited. I didn't know if it was because the engineers of the Holy Terran Empire had set down strict restrictions regarding the programming of their AIs. I didn't know if Aegis was typical of her kind, but she clearly exceeded any modern AI produced by the various nations on Earth today, possessing a semi sentience that might allow her to pass the Turing Test, and capable of running complex calculations despite being housed in such a relatively small device.
In fact, compared to the AIs designed by modern programmers and engineers, I thought it fair to describe Aegis as a super AI.
However, there were strict limitations. She couldn't make any decisions on her own and had to entirely rely on me for authorization to take action. Despite displaying initiative, it was only so to better aid me in making more informed decisions.
Right now, this came in the form of an overflow of data.
"Commander, please dodge to your right. There's an attack incoming from the left."
"Commander, there is a window of opportunity for counterattack to its throat here."
"Commander, use me to deflect the enemy's claws directly from the front."
I wasn't sure how to describe the flow of information. While it was partially telepathic messages transmitted directly to my head, it was also more than that. I could see trajectories and estimated maneuvers, as well as optimal points for counterattack. It was as if Aegis was directly conveying visual and numerical data into my brain.
At the same time, it wasn't as if she was hijacking my body and controlling my movements. Nor was she telling me to do. I called them tactical advice because that was what they were. As an AI, Aegis didn't have any sort of emotion or desire. Her tone remained objective and detached. She was simply telling me the most optimal maneuvers, whether it was evasion, attack or defense. She didn't pressure me to take any specific option, merely presenting me an array of choices and simulations that ran through my mind at light speed.
In the end, whatever action I undertook was entirely up to me. Just because ducking under a slash and countering with a ram to its chest had a 99.98% probability of success didn't mean I actually had to go through with it. I could go with the 97.64% probability of success option of sliding to the right and hammering its flank with my shield. Not only that, Aegis singled out vulnerabilities when I attacked, the dancing red flashes blinking across highlighted sections.
Grabbing Aegis with both hands, I slammed her into the limb of the Chimera, breaking its joint and causing it to limp backward in shock.
All of these simulations, calculations and data input were conducted in microseconds. I didn't know how my brain was able to keep up with the flow of information that Aegis fed me, but somehow she had reconfigured my mind like a computer. It also helped that I was moving more on intuition than conscious decision, relying on my training and just going with my gut. I had already decided on what I wanted to do before I consciously thought about it, and my body was moving to achieve the desired outcome before I was aware of the execution.
Spinning around, I evaded a slash while Aegis rose to parry the giant scorpion stinger above, the Chimera believing that a simultaneous strike might be able to impale me. While Aegis blocked the stinger, I jumped on top of the swiping paw and kicked the Chimera in the face. Cartwheeling in midair, I used gravity and momentum to swing my foot down in an axe kick that cracked the crown of its skull.
The Chimera bellowed.
I flipped myself about and landed on both hands before propelling myself backward. Whatever retaliatory strike the Chimera intended was deflected by Aegis, who intervened before I could get stabbed.
"Huff…"
I wiped the perspiration from my face and exhaled wearily. Now I understood why Aegis made me run every morning, increasing the distance from 2.5 km to 5km and eventually to 10km after a few months. Stamina was important in a fight. Many people underestimated the need for stamina, but if I was winded and heaving for air in exhaustion right now, then I would have fallen to the Chimera.
I didn't have the physical strength to crush it, true, but I had the stamina to escape its deadly strikes.
"Three minutes, huh?"
I had been running for almost an hour daily by now. Three minutes were nothing. I could keep this up for a lot longer…!
The Chimera wasn't impressed. With a snarl, it lunged forward again, slashing and stabbing with its claws and tail. Unfortunately, its speed was impeded because of the broken limb I had dealt it earlier. I took advantage of that, moving in from its injured flank and ramming my shield into its neck. It croaked and whipped its tail at me, but I dove under it before rolling away to avoid being stomped.
"Firing now!" Lin Xue shouted suddenly. "Get out of the way!"
The three minutes were finally up? It didn't feel that long to me. Nonetheless, I wasn't going to object. I didn't want to fight this beast forever.
Hurling myself to the side, I dove behind a tree for cover and rolled under the cluster of thick roots. As I came to a stop and lifted my head, I saw a dazzling blast of electricity unleashed from the barrel of Lin Xue's gun. A titanic bolt of lightning – much larger than anything she had fired before – engulfed the stunned Chimera. At first, it tried to bound away, but its broken leg gave way beneath it and it fell before its body disappeared under the searing light.
"Phew…"
As the smoke cleared, I saw that Lin Xue had stayed true to her word. The bulk of the Chimera was nothing more than blackened soot, with only a crumbling silhouette an indication that it once existed. Most of it had disintegrated under the sheer heat, burned into ash that fluttered away on the soft breeze that swept through the forest, as if the trees were sighing in relief in the aftermath of the ferocious duel.
"Great job, senior."
I clambered to Lin Xue's position, wiping the perspiration from my face and grinning in relief. She nodded, panting heavily. Little trickles of electricity still danced around her like worms, fading away weakly. Evidently, she had exhausted a lot of her energy with that little trick.
"I'll need some time to recover. And don't touch me." She made a face. "Sorry, that came out wrong. I mean, it's best to avoid physical contact with me for the moment, or you'll be electrocuted."
"Don't worry, I know what you mean. I can see the electrical currents still being discharged from your body."
Lin Xue nodded and tried to dust away the remaining currents, grimacing as she brushed her hands against her arms. Then she cast a baleful glare at the blackened remains of the Chimera.
"What the hell is that? Was that…an alien creature native to this planet?"
"Seems so," I replied when Aegis's only response was insufficient data. Then I stiffened, holding my shield up and regarding the trees. "Seems like it has friends."
Loping out from between the thick trunks were a pack of hideously mutated wolves, their striped black and red fur writhing like worms and tumors growing from swollen bodies. Jaws slavering with corrosive drool that produced acrid fumes when dripping onto the soil, they stalked toward us in a ring, their misshapen claws so sharp that they sliced through blades of grass at the merest of contact.
And there were dozens of them.