With Tatsumaki giving her all, the evacuation of A-City was essentially complete. Aside from a small handful of people still scrambling to exit the city outskirts, the entire battlefield had been cleared out.
With plenty of energy left and ample room to operate, Tatsumaki could finally cut loose.
The high-rises and rubble on the ground all became weapons for her to hurl at the warship in the sky—and that wasn't even the limit of her reach.
Stretching her psychic powers to the absolute limit, she dragged several massive meteorites, each a hundred meters in diameter, down from space.
Although their size had been significantly reduced by the friction of the atmosphere, an object of such mass would undoubtedly inflict devastating damage upon the ship if it struck home.
GeRyuuganshoop could no longer just sit and watch.
Whirrr—!
"Huh?" A formless blue light rapidly smothered the green glow surrounding the plummeting meteorites. Tatsumaki, who was in the middle of controlling other objects to pelt the warship, cast a glance upward.
"Pure telekinesis?"
Her expression remained stoic as she reached out a hand toward the now-stalled meteorites.
A sharp, searing pain instantly surged through GeRyuuganshoop's entire being.
Had he been human, he would have been bleeding from all seven orifices due to the sudden psychic shock, but his non-human physiology allowed him to regain his composure quickly.
The speed of the falling meteorites suddenly accelerated.
"This planet actually possesses such a powerful psychic?!"
As the self-proclaimed greatest telekinetic master, even though he hadn't been using his full strength, being countered so easily left GeRyuuganshoop feeling as though his dignity had been challenged.
Multicolorous lights began to rise from his blue-black tentacles, and even his golden eyes flickered with a chaotic spectrum of intersecting rays.
The second round of their tug-of-war had begun. Yet, GeRyuuganshoop, who had been full of confidence just moments ago, found himself breaking out in a cold sweat.
"Hmph."
Though Tatsumaki couldn't see the expression of the ability user, she could easily imagine his frustrated panic.
Admittedly, this was the strongest telekinetic she had encountered so far, but... he was still too weak.
After a brief clash, the meteorites not only failed to slow down by even an inch, but they began to descend even more violently.
Drenched in sweat, GeRyuuganshoop scrambled to find a breakthrough, eventually discovering the key to turning the situation around.
He stopped trying to brute-force his telekinesis against Tatsumaki's. Instead, he slipped through the gaps in her psychic hold and destroyed the meteorites directly from the inside.
Even this brief skirmish allowed him to grasp the strengths and weaknesses of both sides: that unknown telekinetic's raw power was even greater than his own, the self-proclaimed strongest in the universe.
But... that person's application of telekinesis was abysmal, akin to a backward caveman with zero technique.
Take the current situation—if it were him, he would have simply neutralized the friction, allowing the meteorites to land without losing a single fragment, rather than burning away half their mass for the sake of raw acceleration like this girl did.
"Trying to be clever, are you?" Tatsumaki remarked.
If her telekinesis had formed a net to drag the meteorites down, the opponent had simply found a way to slip through the gaps in the mesh and shatter the payload from within.
A crafty little pest.
"Fine, I'll play with you for real..."
Tatsumaki fixed her gaze on the warship above, preparing to crush it with sheer gravity, when she noticed the vessel tilting inexplicably.
"Did Tatsumaki's attack actually work?!" Puri-Puri Prisoner exclaimed in surprise, though he immediately added with concern, "But little Alice is still on that ship... if it crashes..."
"Huh!?"
Tatsumaki looked at Puri-Puri Prisoner in stunned disbelief. "Why didn't you say so sooner, you idiot!?"
"Eh...? But little Alice mentioned it over the comms earlier..."
She had been busy as all hell at the time; when would she have had the time to listen to that?
Her mood soured instantly.
Tatsumaki really wanted to vent her frustrations on that warship, but remembering what Puri-Puri Prisoner had said, she restrained her urge to yank it out of the sky and twist it into a pile of scrap metal.
Bang, who had been observing the situation from the side, offered a faint smile, only to be interrupted by Atomic Samurai in front of him. "Silver Fang, if you've got nothing to do, go take care of that guy."
He pointed to the monster in the distance, who was locked in a back-and-forth battle with Metal Bat.
It was a three-meter-tall monster with mud-colored skin. The most striking thing about it was that it possessed several heads, and its entire body could shift into any form while constantly self-regenerating.
With no technique or rhythm, just a giant punching bag that was impossible to kill, it was the worst possible matchup for a swordsman like him. Atomic Samurai simply couldn't muster any interest in such an opponent.
"You annoying flies! Die!"
The monster's arm transformed into a heavy mallet, slamming down into the ground from above. Melzargald glared with a ferocious face at Metal Bat, who had narrowly dodged the blow.
"All you do is scurry around!"
"What did you say, you bastard?!"
Hearing this, the already impatient Metal Bat flared with rage. "Don't get cocky! If I didn't have to pick up my sister later without being covered in wounds, I'd have finished a piece of trash like you already!"
"Don't let him provoke you, Metal Bat. This monster is extremely strong," Zombie Man warned from the sidelines.
Melzargald's blood pressure was through the roof. Between one guy who couldn't be killed and another who kept dodging everywhere, he hadn't been able to secure a single decisive blow. As one of the three major executives, it was an utter disgrace.
"Alright, alright. This old man's warm-up is about done."
Bang said as he walked toward the three. "Sorry for making you stall him for so long. The other ground forces have already been taken care of."
"My jacket is covered in dust now..." Metal Bat looked at his school uniform with a headache. Should he tell her he tripped by accident later?
"Let me help you clean that off." Bang smiled, reached out, and patted the boy on the back. A formless burst of internal energy radiated from his palm across the boy's entire body, and the countless specks of dust simply scattered to the ground.
"Are you serious? Is this what martial arts can do?"
Metal Bat stared at his clothes in disbelief.
"Hahaha, it's just a little trick for focusing energy. If you're interested, you're welcome to come to my dojo..."
"Ah, that won't be necessary. I have to pick my sister up from school every day, I don't really have the time."
"You bunch of inferior species!!" Seeing them suddenly chatting in such a friendly atmosphere, Melzargald's rage became unbearable. "GeRyuuganshoop! Forget the things in the sky! For now, direct your fire at the ground—"
BOOM—!
What was that this time!?
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T/N: If you want advance chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL