Hundreds of laser beams and anti-air missiles came at him at the same time, with only a few seconds' difference between them.
That level of coordination between the Sentinels and the missiles was enough to show just how powerful this base's military command system really was.
"Fenris!"
Seeing Fenris about to be swallowed by the incoming barrage, Magneto, still several kilometers away, had not even had time to raise a hand before his expression changed and the magnetic field around the missiles began to shift.
Boom!
Every anti-air missile detonated ahead of time, exploding in deafening blasts high in the sky.
At the same time, Fenris snapped his wings open and vanished from where he was like an afterimage. Hundreds of thick laser beams missed him completely.
But more and more laser fire followed in rapid succession, continuously shooting toward Fenris.
Not far away, several towering close-in defense guns slowly shed their camouflage. Their bullet storms, firing more than ten thousand rounds per minute, locked firmly onto Fenris, with intersecting lines of fire constantly cutting off his movement.
Fortunately, Fenris was fast enough. With nothing more than a casual beat of his wings, he left all of those attacks far behind.
But as more and more Sentinels climbed up from underground and were split into two groups under remote command, one of those groups swarmed densely toward Magneto in the distance.
Because of the special environment here, there was nowhere near enough steel for Magneto to use. Worried he might not be able to handle a situation like this, Fenris's gaze sharpened. He suddenly dropped lower in flight, and the light on his wings flared once more.
After a brief charge-up, a low hum sounded out, followed by an instantaneous burst of dazzling light.
Powerful force rolled through the air. Wherever Fenris passed, the Sentinels on the ground looked as if they had suddenly been struck by some crushing blow and were slammed flat against the earth.
Most of their bodies warped on impact, letting out ugly metallic screeches.
The light kept flashing. After only a few bursts, the number of Sentinels on the ground had already been reduced by nearly a third.
...
At the same time, inside the underground base.
As they watched wave after wave of enormously expensive Sentinels get wiped out in clusters by this creature that had appeared out of nowhere, the huge command room fell into dead silence.
"What the hell is that thing? The Sentinels have so many built-in attack patterns, and they're still that helpless against it?"
"What about the Sentinels' mimicry ability? Why can't they copy this kind of light attack at all?"
The commanding officer at the head of the room frowned. Watching the number of Sentinels on the screen plummet in chunks, his face grew darker and darker.
"This ability is completely different from normal mutant powers... The Sentinels can't share it with each other, and the current algorithms can't simulate it either," someone answered.
On the display, some of the Sentinels that Fenris had knocked down were continuously emitting all kinds of colored light, as though trying to unleash the energy they had stored.
But after a violent shudder ran through their frames, that energy exploded inside their own bodies instead.
"How many Sentinels do we have left?" the commander asked.
"Less than a thousand. The nineteenth generation is already an obsolete model. This isn't even one of the core research bases. If these were the newest Sentinels, maybe we could still..."
"The enemy only has two people. One is Magneto. The other is some unknown creature whose power we can't simulate at all. That means the Sentinels' mimicry and shared-adaptation systems can't function properly. They can only rely on a pitifully small set of basic abilities..."
"The data in this base absolutely cannot be allowed to fall into mutant hands. If the Sentinels fail, then this place has no reason to keep existing."
"And I refuse to believe he can keep firing attacks with that kind of power nonstop forever."
The commander stared at the screen, grinding his teeth.
"Send out every Sentinel we have left! This is all or nothing."
"...Understood."
On the surface, Magneto frowned as he hovered steadily in midair.
An invisible magnetic force field surrounded him, blocking every Sentinel attack without letting a single one through.
Bang!
Against Fenris, the Sentinels had looked far less threatening. His overwhelming speed meant their ranged attacks simply could not lock onto him, and the explosive shockwave from his blazing light had destroyed large numbers of them right from the start.
But against Magneto, their sheer brutality became obvious at once.
Their long limbs could transform at will, and the power they could unleash from their bodies was terrifyingly strong. It was only because the database held too little usable mutant ability data that the methods they displayed now were still limited.
Bang!
Dozens of Sentinels suddenly leaped high into the air, their right arms morphing into sharp spears that stabbed viciously toward Magneto.
The powerful blows crashed into the magnetic field. They failed to shake it in the slightest, but they still gave Magneto a scare.
More spear strikes followed one after another, while countless laser beams continued to fire from the rear.
Some of the Sentinels even began to radiate frost and molten heat. Since they contained no metal at all, Magneto found himself momentarily thrown off when faced with these troublesome machines.
Fortunately, none of those attacks could break through the field's protection in the short term, and only then did he let out a breath.
If this had been his former self, he probably would have been skewered by those spears the moment the fight began.
"But..."
"That was then."
Magneto let out a cold snort and raised both hands high.
Rumble!
The instant he lifted his arms, the air began to tremble. The magnetic field across dozens of miles twisted as though caught in an invisible giant net. Amid the screech of grinding metal, purple arcs of electricity began to glow deep within the clouds.
Magneto wove and pulled those arcs together again and again until they finally condensed into bolts of lightning as thick as barrels.
In an instant, thunder and lightning exploded around him. Brilliant currents surged through the air, and it seemed as though the entire world had been swallowed by a storm of lightning.
Crack!
Violent bolts of electricity slammed down with precision onto the Sentinels, scorching their outer shells black.
However, after being iterated nineteen times, the Sentinels had long since been designed with lightning attacks in mind.
So when Magneto suddenly created a thunderstorm, every Sentinel below chose in perfect unison to convert its body into steel, channeling the violent current directly into the ground.
No matter how wildly the lightning raged, not a single Sentinel was destroyed. In fact, as the storm gradually faded, powerful currents of electricity began crackling over their bodies in eerie synchronization.
Looking at the Sentinels below, now glowing with electricity, Magneto finally burst out laughing.
"I was just wondering how I was supposed to drag the iron out from underground."
"Well, that problem just delivered itself right to my doorstep."
(End of Chapter)
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