Chapter 161: I’m stronger than Teon Allistar

For a moment, Batnac did not seem to understand the words.

"Weaker," he repeated.

"Yes."

"Than you."

"Yes."

The giant’s face twisted. It was not the grin he had worn all morning, and it was not the careful smile he used when he wanted to seem polite.

It was the ugly, shaking look of a man who had just been slapped in front of a crowd.

"You," Batnac said. His voice cracked in the middle of the word. "You, a bastard with nothing but tricks dare to call me weak?!"

"I did not say your name," Leon said.

"You did not need to!"

The roar of the thrusters rose to a scream. The windows along the street rattled in their frames, and the white fumes billowed across the road so thickly that several of the neighbors began to cough.

Batnac’s arms jerked wide, and the fingers he had left curled into fists.

"You are underestimating me!" he shouted. "Do you know what that means, bastard? Do you know how many people have said that to me before? Do you know how many of them are still walking around?"

"Tell me."

"Not one!"

"I am an S-rank!" Batnac thundered. "Do you know what that word means? I have stood on the front line of seven dungeon breaks, and I did not lose a single machine in any of them!"

"I have held a city of three million people in the palm of my hand! There are men who have trained for forty years who cannot do what I do before breakfast!"

He jabbed a claw at Leon’s chest.

"And I am stronger than Teon Allistar."

The words hung over the road like a held breath.

Leon’s expression did not change, but something behind his eyes went very cold.

"Stronger," Batnac said, enjoying the sound of it.

"Yes, you heard me. Everyone says that he was one of the greatest S-ranks of his generation, the lion of the south, the man who could not be beaten."

"I do not care what everyone says. I stood across a table from him at the Association summit three years ago, and he looked me in the eye, and he said that I was a dangerous man."

"That does not sound like a compliment."

"It was the highest one he had!" The giant’s voice cracked again.

"Teon Allistar did not hand out praise! He never said it to a man he did not mean it about!"

"He acknowledged me himself, in front of forty people, and he shook my hand, and I did not let anyone touch that hand for a week!"

He struck his own chest with a fist, and the plates rang like a bell.

"So do not tell me I am weak," Batnac said. "You killed a great man, and you did it with some trick, and you are going to pay for it. And when I am done with you, nobody will ever call me weak again."

"You are shouting," Leon said.

"I am shouting because I am angry!"

"Yes. I noticed."

"Then notice this!"

Batnac raised all eight arms above his head.

The plates along the forearms snapped open with a series of loud clacks.

Racks slid out of each of them, dark and narrow, and every rack was packed with rows of small steel cylinders with glowing orange tips.

The cylinders swiveled in their sockets to point down at the street. A wave of heat rolled off them, and the air above the giant shimmered.

Somebody in the crowd began to scream.

"Iris," Leon said.

She did not answer. She was still standing in front of him with her hands against her mouth, and she did not seem to hear.

"Iris!"

That time she flinched. She turned her head, and her eyes found his.

"Stand behind me," he said. "Stay close and do not move."

She hesitated. The look on her face was hard to read, and there was a great deal in it, but she did what he asked. She stepped back until her shoulder touched his arm.

"Fire," Batnac said softly.

Forty-eight missiles left the arms at once.

The noise was enormous. It started as a roar and became a single tearing shriek, and the sky above the street filled with white trails of smoke that curved and twisted like the roots of a tree.

Every missile was hurtling toward the same spot. The crowd threw themselves flat. A woman wrapped both arms around her child. The old man on the doorstep covered his head with his hands.

Leon lifted his left arm.

"Aegis," he said.

The Ring of Aegis flared on his finger, and light poured out of it.

It spilled across his forearm, spread outward, and hardened into a broad, round shield of gleaming bronze and gold with a woman’s face etched in the center.

Her hair was a mass of snakes, and her eyes were wide open.

The shield grew as Leon raised it, wider and wider, until its edge touched both sides of the street, and the light rolled up over the rooftops like the lid of a great bell.

The first missile struck.

It struck the face of the woman on the shield, exactly in the middle, and it burst in a blinding orange flash.

The second hit a heartbeat later, and then the third, and then the sky vanished in a continuous roar of fire. Smoke billowed in every direction.

The ground shook so hard that the cracks in the pavement spread like cobwebs, and one of the lampposts at the end of the road bent over and snapped.

Behind the shield, nothing moved. The air stayed still. Iris’s hair did not so much as flutter.

The last of the missiles died on the shield, and the light on its surface swelled to a blinding white.

Then, the shield spat out everything that had struck it.

A wall of orange fire and white smoke rose from the face of the shield and rushed toward the giant. It was ten times the size of what had struck it.