The world shifts around me, and I'm back to moments before the Empire unleashes the hidden beam. I take a deep breath and teleport directly on the battlefield; I hope that the laser will not vaporize me, or I'm going to have to repeat the day.

I can't help but smile at the irony of the situation; I'm actually afraid of dying for the first time in a while.

My aura stops the battle for a moment, or at least it does on the Imperial side. My men are used to it by now, so they keep firing.

I feel something draining. My soul strength is being consumed at a small yet steady pace so I won't have a lot of available retries before I run out.

The imperial troops aren't stunned for too long, and thy focus all their firepower on me. I barely flinch as all those beams obscure my vision and aim a weapon of my own. The deafening roar of my shotgun covers all the other noises as the MH Shells erase an entire group of soldiers.

It should take too long now. My distraction should be enough to spare my men from the-

I suddenly can't see anything. I can't feel a single limb; it's like I'm paralyzed.

My shield held for a few seconds, but now my only protection is the robes and my aura. The previously slow and barely noticeable drain on my soul strength is enough to bring me to my knees. My very core is being drained to shield me against this terrifying attack, and I know that I won't last long if I keep defending.

There's only one choice left, so I deactivate my aura. The beam slams against my robe, and they hold surprisingly well. However, the heat of the deadly ray is not stopped; my enchanted armor is too weak to contain such a powerful attack, so I'm boiling alive inside my melting armor.

My screams are the only things I can hear, my eardrums having melted an eternity ago. In truth, it has barely been a second, but the agony made it feel like years.

The regeneration is the only thing keeping me alive, and the pain makes me wish that I had a way to turn it off.

I would do anything, anything to stop this agony for even one second. My blood boils into my veins while my lungs melt from the inside. All the water in my body evaporates in an instant, which makes my skin explode. Not that it matters anyway, my skin is already melted beyond recognition.

This horror happened in an instant, and it begins again in the next moment when my body is back to its original state.

The beam finally stops. Has it been years? Days? Or just mere seconds? I can't tell, my sense of time has been obliterated along with my flesh.

Silence falls onto the battlefield just as I regain my hearing. I stare at my hands, which are covered in glowing hot metal. The armor somehow retained its shape, but the heat it emits would be enough to scorch the nearby vegetation if there was some left.

I get up, my burning body creating a veritable cloud of smoke as I slowly cool down. The Rewinder somehow survived; it looks like the armor shifted to protect the phones from the damage.

Even my armor knows that I'm less valuable than my phones.

I get up and tighten my grip onto my gun, not caring that the glowing metal only increases the pain in my hand. I have to appear strong. I have to strike fear into the heart of the Empire no matter what. If I look weak, the Empire will crush us, so I have to pretend that everything is fine.

I point towards the enemy facility before rushing forward. The Legionaries cheer and increase their efforts to destroy the Imperial defenses while the Imperial troops stare at me like they've seen a ghost. The sheer heat I'm radiating is enough to take out the nearest soldiers, who fall on their back while screaming and clawing at their now glowing armor.

The grass under my feet is vaporized in an instant as I run forward.

As it turns out, running while your bones turn into a liquid isn't easy.

I finally reach the walls. Luckily for me, I cooled down to a more manageable temperature. I'm only just as hot as flowing lava compared to the star-like temperatures I reached earlier. It's still more than enough to melt me, but it's slowly becoming easier to endure.

The enemy soldiers are still shooting, but they are keeping their distance to protect against the heat. Of course, it doesn't do much good for them since there are still twenty tanks rampaging around. The shooters are usually vaporized within the second they take a shot at me.

My attention shifts towards the walls and I aim my shotgun towards the magically-reinforced building before pulling the trigger. A deluge of wild mana surges from the barrel of the gun, it smashes against the obstacle and causes cracks to appear on the surface of the wall. It only takes a minute of continuous shooting to finally make a man-sized hole into the wall.

My jaw drops when I see what's inside. A massive polished steel cannon covered in runes stands in the middle of the empty building. It is covered with runes so complex I cannot even see them from there, and there's a lot of high-quality Magicite embedded into the artifact's surface.

The sheer complexity of the circuitry is enough to make my head spin; even the Order would be hard-pressed to replicate such a feat. I also notice the resemblance with the beam weapons used by the armored soldiers; the one in front of me is likely the upscaled version.

The personnel surroundings the cannon stops in its tracks once they notice me.

I aim my gun towards them, and it's enough to make them flee, sadly no one will escape from the massacre that's about to happen.

A couple of MH Shells is all it takes to kill the fleeing Imperials. I should have a few moments of rest before the rest of the Imperial army tries to kill me, so I take a deep breath while examining the cannon. The craftsmanship is remarkable; not a single inch of surface is wasted. It wouldn't be a lie to say that I see more runes in this single cannon than the Order has ever produced.

Rune-wise, our weapons are on a child's level. But, unlike this Imperial marvel of engineering that must have taken months to prepare, our guns are using runes as an enhancement rather than relying on them for everything.

It costs a bit more in materials, but what's the point of spending what must have been tens of millions of Credits when a few Hammer shells do the same job for a fraction of the cost?

We still have the edge on the Empire on that front, but I'm not really comfortable with what I'm seeing. The Empire must be spending a significant amount of its budget on developing doomsday devices like this cannon. The beam weapon is far from perfect since I see cracks on certain parts of the circuitry, and individual crystals have exploded, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.

This cannon also shows a drastic shift in Imperial doctrine. They are making large-scale enchanted weapons instead of relying on Strategic Spells.

At this rate, it won't be long before the Empire figures out that overcharged disposable artifacts are the way to go. It makes production simpler and faster and, if it's designed correctly, the destroyed parts of the runic circuit can be changed in an instant.

Of course, we will do anything to stop the Empire from reaching that point. Destroying this facility and killing all the personnel should destroy the knowledge they gathered. And, even if most of the Stonecrusher research survives, then razing this place will at least significantly slow down their research.

The tanks smashing through the weakened walls takes me out of my thoughts. It's time to assault this facility!