Marvel: A Lazy-Ass Superman

Chapter 798: Chapter 798: A Hard-Fought Battle at the Airport

The yellow-skinned man who had appeared out of nowhere on the battlefield hovered in midair, surrounded by several palm-sized metal rings. He had no fear of becoming a target, because every bullet fired at him was swiftly deflected by the rapidly moving metal rings.

Two rings hovered on either side beneath him, positioned under the soles of his feet as though they had become extensions of his legs. From that elevated position, he looked down upon the mutant soldiers of the U.S. military.

When he landed, the four rings beneath his feet even knocked two men aside. Now, it was as though he were standing on two mutants, surveying the entire battlefield while ignoring the cries for help coming from below.

The groans of their comrades struck a nerve with the soldiers. Every last one of them turned their muzzles toward this man, who was practically a living target, and unleashed a torrent of gunfire. Some, feeling that their firepower was insufficient, even switched directly to grenade launchers.

Yet the firepower of their modern weapons was calmly deflected by those mysterious Ten Rings. It was as though the bullets fired from their rifles were nothing more than scraps of paper, not even as powerful as BB pellets.

Some soldiers emptied their rifle magazines, switched to pistols, and continued firing. One of them angrily cursed as he shot.

”Ah, you damned terrorist!”

”Me? A terrorist?” The remaining six rings suddenly thrust outward!

The shockwave they released knocked everyone to the ground.

”As far as this land is concerned, you are the invaders. I am the hero protecting it.”

The man speaking shook both arms. Henry, who had also been knocked down by the shockwave, wondered how the other man intended to deal with so many American soldiers using nothing but his fists.

But the six rings moving with the man’s arms, together with the four beneath his feet, did not become extensions of various martial arts techniques.

Each of the Ten Rings possessed its own unique ability. Some released blizzards of ice and snow. Others erupted with lightning and thunder. Still others spat out explosive fireballs. Some flashed cutting beams from their surfaces, while others fired laser beams or black-body rays.

The full might of the Ten Rings was unleashed. The mutants were like defenseless chickens waiting to be slaughtered. Anyone struck by an attack was either killed or crippled.

”Henry, don’t forget your mission!”

Those were the last words the young second lieutenant and platoon leader ever said to the soldiers under his command.

Then, right before Henry’s eyes, two beams of light crossed through his body. Not only was he bisected at the waist, but his body was also split along its central axis. He was cut into four pieces, dead beyond any doubt.

Frank Castle was killed in action.

Blair Aoxing, the Apache mutant, was likewise unable to withstand the combination of the blizzard and explosive fireballs that followed one after another. The resulting collision of ice and flame tore him apart, scattering his remains across the ground.

The comrades from the same squad, the soldiers who had just been rescued from the encirclement by their own people—those vivid, living human beings had all been sacrificed to the might of the Ten Rings.

Only Henry endured every attack with his bare body. He kept his finger on the trigger of his light machine gun and charged forward with his head lowered.

Even after his light machine gun was destroyed, Henry merely switched to a pistol and continued firing backward without daring to stop running.

As he passed the two buildings that had served as firing positions, Henry shouted toward the people on their rooftops, ”Move! The platoon leader is dead!”

Some of the soldiers who had already come down took the lead and began running. But the gunfire from the rooftops did not stop.

Henry shouted again, ”Move! If we don’t leave now, it’ll be too late!”

This time, however, the soldiers preparing to leave supported Henry and dragged him along as they ran.

Someone beside him said, ”Someone has to cover the retreat. Otherwise, no one can hold back that damned bastard.”

As if to prove his comrade’s words, Henry caught sight of the light machine-gunners on the rooftop standing up recklessly and firing at Xu Wenwu.

But all this did was force Xu Wenwu to stop and eliminate them first.

When they finally made it through the barbed-wire fence, everyone was in a miserable state.

The main force they had believed would serve as their support was now caught in the Ten Rings’ full-scale assault.

Henry did not need to find his company commander, report the situation, and have the information passed up the chain of command. Everyone already understood the situation they were in. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Frank’s platoon was finished. Henry could only turn back and join up with the soldiers from the Dog Company.

But the lieutenant company commander, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy with a promising future ahead of him, had likewise been reduced to charred bones beneath the bombardment of the Ten Rings’ fireballs.

As for the fighting spirit of the Ten Rings’ foot soldiers, they were no less willing to hold down the trigger when they saw an enemy, recklessly pouring out bullets with the same lavish disregard for ammunition as the American troops.

No matter how special the Marine Corps’ mutant battalion was, among the Ten Rings’ followers—who wore no unified uniforms—there were also plenty of mutants with conspicuous abilities.

The only distinguishing feature was that they belonged to the West Asian ethnic group.

These men likewise raised their guns and hunted down their American countrymen.

And with Xu Wenwu, a combatant of an entirely different caliber, wherever a cluster of tough resistance appeared, he went there to attack.

The mutant battalion simply could not find a single opponent capable of standing on equal footing with him. The entire battle line was torn apart and smashed to pieces.

All the American mutant soldiers were fleeing. They climbed onto trucks that had shifted into reverse, hoping to retreat as quickly as possible.

But an RPG fired from a concealed position sent their hopes of escape—and their dismembered bodies—into the sky together.

Some realized they could not escape and simply remained where they were to resist.

They emptied their rifles and switched to pistols. When their pistols ran dry, they changed magazines.

But the enemy would never give them that much time. The moment there was a gap in their gunfire, someone would throw a grenade at them, blowing them off their feet.

The armored personnel carriers carrying the senior officers were no better at escaping.

Among these broken walls and shattered ruins that were practically indistinguishable from a wasteland, it was easy for a driver to make one careless mistake and steer into a pile of rubble. The wheeled vehicle’s tires would then spin uselessly, leaving it stuck in place.

At that point, Ten Rings foot soldiers would take Molotov cocktails and hurl them at the observation windows.

Although the thick glass blocked the flames, and the gasoline could not easily flow through the gaps in the body of a modern armored vehicle, the psychological pressure on the passengers was far greater than outsiders could imagine.

The rubber tires were certainly not resilient enough to withstand the intense heat of the flames. Some burst directly.

As long as the people inside could not withstand the pressure and opened the hatch on top or the side door, someone would immediately throw in a grenade, taking the lives of everyone inside the vehicle.

One could say that in the face of bullets, all beings were equal.

Regardless of which religion they believed in or which country they served, once a bullet struck, the outcome was the same.

The only exceptions were the mutants in the mutant battalion who possessed the ability to be impervious to blades and bullets.

Some were able to retreat with the crowd while continuing to fight, but they usually ended up surrounded by the Ten Rings’ superior numbers.

Others abandoned everything and fled with all their might.

Watching the Marine Corps’ mutant battalion collapse across the entire front, Henry felt a deep, helpless sense of defeat.

He could not change any of this. He could not even use his own body as a shield to save a few more comrades.

Attacks were coming from every direction, and Xu Wenwu’s Ten Rings were so powerful that they inspired nothing but despair.

Yet, in the end, Henry saw an opportunity.

He spotted a fallen comrade with a string of grenades hanging greedily from his body.

They were weapons Frank had believed he did not need. As long as he carried a light machine gun, he had thought, he would be unstoppable.

Reality had proven otherwise.

Amid the flames of battle, Henry gathered as many grenades as he could and then turned back toward Xu Wenwu.

Although he had lost the vast majority of his Kryptonian abilities, he still possessed one traditional technique he could employ.

He found some wire and wrapped it around the pins of several grenades.

He did not connect all of them; there had been no way to prepare everything so thoroughly while fleeing.

During one burst of gunfire, Henry pretended to fall just like the comrades beside him.

Then he waited.

He waited for the howling sound of the Ten Rings cutting through the air as they moved back and forth overhead, and for the vibrations and resonances caused by their various strange attacks.

Those abnormal sounds could be heard even without super-hearing—even on a battlefield like this.

When everything drew close enough, Henry suddenly rose!

He pulled on the wire, yanking out the pins of several grenades at once, and charged toward Xu Wenwu, who was standing on the ground and scattering the Ten Rings through the air.

The thousand-year-old martial artist’s reactions were undeniably swift.

But no matter what kind of attack came at him—wind, rain, thunder, lightning, or various cutting beams—Henry endured it all with his body.

His final impression was of a shocked expression only inches from his face, and a metal ring shaped somewhat like a command tower blocking the space between himself and Xu Wenwu.

The mental storm churned his consciousness into chaos.

His brain’s protective mechanisms temporarily shut his consciousness down.

In the end, even the man who was impervious to blades and bullets was brought down.

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