That something was a piece of heavy equipment. A wrecked machine, compressed into a crumpled ball of metal, and hurled at us almost like a gauss projectile.
The both of us didn't move out of the way, but we didn't have to because Aegis swooped in between us, blocking the projectile and disintegrating it with her protective energy barrier. There was a curse, and I looked from behind my hovering shield to spot two guys inside the room.
"Damn, there's more of them? They just keep coming!" One of them whined. He was a tall and lanky guy with a weird complexion, his messy hair hanging shaggily over his face. He raised a hand and several pieces of broken furniture floated, levitated by his willpower alone. "I thought we already crushed their entire army? Where did these two come from?!"
"Wait." The second guy was a massive, burly guy with huge muscles. Unlike the pale lanky guy, he had dark skin and his long hair was braided stylishly. For some reason, he was also wearing sunglasses and smoking indoors. He was a giant who towered over three meters, his bulk filling out the room as he heaved against the portal. He looked at me cautiously. "That kid…from the report, isn't he the one with the…technology to activate and disassemble the portal? We should capture him."
"No," I said. "I have no intention of going anywhere with you."
"I wasn't asking you," the muscular dark-skinned guy said.
"Hah!" The pale lanky guy was laughing as he gathered more objects to hurl at me. Evidently, his special ability was telekinesis. "You don't have a choice, brat! DIE!"
He tossed metal, furniture and broken equipment at me. I ducked under a whipping wire, rolled away from a piece of metallic debris, and then dove out of the way of a sofa. Evading a chair, I then twisted to the side to avoid getting impaled by a pole.
That was dangerous. I had heard of how kinesis could be used as a weapon, particularly because I played a science fiction horror game involving an engineer surviving space zombies aboard a planetcracker class ship. The remake just came out this year too, and it was awesome. Motive did an amazing job with the remake, motivating lots of people to play it and doing justice to the original by Visceral.
"Didn't I say to capture him?" The muscular guy snapped irritably. "I mean capture him alive, otherwise we will not be able to operate that portal even if we bring it back to base."
"Cool your jets, Bob. He won't die from something like this." The lanky guy scoffed. Then he chuckled. "And besides, you only said that we should capture him. You never mentioned anything about leaving him in one piece. It's fine if he's missing an arm and a leg, right?"
"…I guess."
"See? Leave it to me!"
While the dude was busily throwing makeshift missiles at me, Lin Xue seized the opportunity to attack. A bolt of lightning blasted from her lightning gun, but the burly guy rushed in with a speed that belied his immense size and punched away the electricity.
"No way!" Lin Xue cried out. "That's impossible!"
"Nothing's impossible," the big guy replied, shaking his hands. As he did so, I saw yellow markings stretch across his arms and face, almost like tribal tattoos. Or warpaint. Lin Xue spotted them too and she narrowed her eyes.
"Two psychics. You're not from our organization…who are you?"
"You don't need to know," the big guy replied coldly.
"Why are you wasting time talking with her, Bob?" the telekinesis guy yelled. "Just pulverize her!"
"Shut up, Gregory. You're the one who can't keep his mouth shut."
Despite their banter, the two were working in close unison, with Bob heading toward Lin Xue. Gregory circled around, still tossing bullets at me, but I stayed out of range, retreating to Lin Xue's side. She nodded and focused on aiming at Gregory.
"I'll take care of that skinny guy. You handle the big guy."
"Got it."
"You're kidding, right?" Gregory scoffed when he dodged her lightning while Bob barreled toward Lin Xue's withdrawing form. "You're asking that weak four-eyed nerd to take on Bob, who's like three times his size? Are you asking him to commit suicide? And kid, are you a simp? Throwing away your life just because a beautiful girl asks you to? Have more self-respect and grow a spine! Don't let a woman order you about! If anything, be a man and order her about!"
…good heavens, I didn't think people would be so misogynistic in this day and age. Who the hell said something like that? Men can boss women around, but they couldn't allow themselves to be bossed around by the fairer sex? Why, because…I don't know, some misogynists say so? Who the hell decided that such a hierarchy existed between men and women, anyway?
This wasn't being woke, this was common sense. If anything, the misogynists screaming about woke were simply afraid that their male privilege would be revoked and they would lose the power to bully women. Now, I wasn't naïve enough to think women never bullied men, and there were plenty of women who took advantage of their gender to blackmail men or use it to their advantage for political agendas or whatever. But that didn't justify outdated misogynistic attitudes of enslaving women and forcing them to serve you.
If Lin Xue was ordering me around, it was because she was smarter and had more experience, and I was a fairly fresh recruit who only joined Sprue a few months ago. Not because she was a woman and I was a man. Hell, our genders had nothing to do with rank.
Lin Xue proved it with an accurate shot that almost caught Gregory off guard, scorching his arm and causing him to scream in pain. His retaliatory strikes were fried by the lethal electric field that his assailant emanated, the metal warping from magnetic fields and plastics burning.
Recognizing the threat that Lin Xue posed, Bob focused on her, charging near recklessly. She spun around to focus her lightning on him, but she didn't have to. Instead, I intercepted his tackle, Aegis following my mental command and slamming into his bulk. Despite his massive strength, Bob found his momentum halted by the shield.
"Get out of the way!" he snarled and smacked Aegis out of the way, only for me to slash at him with Arondight the moment my shield budged. He grunted as my blade nicked his arm, but to my surprise, there was no blood. Nonetheless, he remained wary of me, withdrawing before pummeling the ground. I danced away from his furious barrage of punches before thrusting my weapon at an angle that he deflected aside anxiously.
This was why Lin Xue asked me to handle Bob. I had a sword and shield, which made me perfect for close combat. In contrast, Lin Xue excelled in ranged attacks and thus could better counter Gregory's attacks from afar.
Still, I was surprised that Bob was parrying my sword without bleeding. To be fair, he was perspiring and struggling, with psychic energies flaring and wreathing his body in a defensive aura not unlike Lin Xue's electric field. Even so, I could see that maintaining that protective aura was taking a toll on him, forcing him to expend enormous quantities of psychic energies.
"That massive guy must be a psychic from the faculty of Strength!" Lin Xue explained as she continued raining down lightning bolts on a frantically fleeing Gregory. She nodded at her cowering opponent. "And that skinny guy is definitely a psychic from the faculty of Willpower."
"Huh?" I uttered, twirling my sword about for a riposte while Aegis blocked a powerful punch from Bob that caused her to shudder. I then struck with Arondight, causing Bob to hastily deflect the glowing blade aside and panting from the effort. "What? Faculty?"
"We psychics are divided into four main faculties," Lin Xue explained as she kept up the hail of electric bolts. "Those who can move objects with their minds – telekinesis. Telepathy. Precognition. Illusions. Mental influence. These are the psychics from the faculty of Willpower. That's exactly what that lanky guy is doing, isn't he? Telekinesis."
"Yeah, I figured," I muttered as I ducked under a sweeping blow from Bob and retaliated with a thrust into his chest. He grunted and staggered, clutching his chest, and then swiped with a backhanded swing that Aegis blocked. I then slashed with Arondight and caused him to reel away with a bruise. "And I assume the faculty of Strength is what makes this big guy so tough?"
"That's correct," Bob sneered. "Psychics belonging to the faculty of Strength are able to draw power from their surroundings to strengthen their body and limbs, transforming them into formidable warriors who are nigh indestructible. Your sword cannot cut me!"
"Psychics from the faculty of Strength are easily recognizable by those markings," Lin Xue added with a nod. "And they are usually the reason why myths of cultivators are propagated. In the past, these psychics who cultivated strength to temper their bodies and enact miraculous feats of immortality and power were often mistaken as Xian."
"Huh." I raised an eyebrow, parrying Bob's fist with Aegis and poking him with Arondight. "I guess there's a scientific explanation for everything, including ancient legends. Anyway, what are the other two?"
"The third is the faculty of Elements."
"Obviously, you're a psychic from the faculty of Elements."
"That's right." Lin Xue nodded as she generated more lightning. In the distance, Gregory yelped as his cover was blown to bits by her strike. "Those from the faculty of Elements are much more sensitive to the elements in their surroundings and can manipulate them…whether it is to ignite combustible elements in the air to produce fire, control the moisture in the atmosphere to accumulate water or form ice, or spark positive and negative charges in the environment to produce electricity."
"Nice." This time, I actually left a cut on Bob's wrist, causing him to howl and pull back reflexively.
"And the final one is the faculty of mutation. Psychics of this specialization can control and adjust cellular activity, allowing them to transform their bodies on the cellular level and speed up healing."
"So they are the healers of the bunch," I murmured in understanding.
"Try healing from this!" Bob roared and tried to pulverize me, but Aegis stood firm against his powerful punch. Even so, the shockwave rippled and almost knocked me over, and it was violent enough to leave a crater in the ground.
"Hey! Weren't we supposed to capture him!? You were the one who told me not to kill him!"
"The brat's a lot more resilient than I thought!" Bob growled, frustrated. My response was to slash him with Arondight, and this time my blade opened up a long wound from wrist to shoulder, sending up a spray of blood. Bob bellowed and reeled back, clutching his arm. "How?!"
"Oh." I shrugged before resuming my attack. "It's just that I finally got used to how hard your skin is and adjusted my strength accordingly."
"You…you are not a psychic, are you?" Bob snarled and tried to punch me with his other hand – the one with the bleeding wrist, but at least it wasn't impeded by ruptured tendons and slick with blood. I easily dodged it before slicing his shirt apart and gouging a deep line into his torso that tracked from shoulder to hip. He staggered with a cry. "How…?!"
I didn't reply, and instead, my eyes were drawn to the black dragon tattooed into the top left of his chest, just narrowly missing the angry red cut that I had left on his body. it was serpentine and coiled, resembling not the oriental dragons that I was used to seeing, but a more Western one…but one without wings.
Actually, it resembled a dinosaur more than a dragon.
"The Cult of the Dragon," Aegis hissed, apparently seeing the same thing as I did. "I should have known. It seems that the Saurian has managed to plant the seeds of insurrection in the population here on Earth."