Puzzle Madness

Chapter 204 The First Dream War (Part 10)
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The shirt sleeves bulged abruptly, their white tips piercing the fabric. Her seemingly slender arms were bent backward from the impact and twisting—
Ka Ka Ka Ka
But Marie Inoue continued to fly, surging and crashing forward; her right arm bones broke off piece by piece, even stacking together and compressing into a cube-like mass. It looked as if her arm was visibly shortening and thickening.

The paving stones beneath DouDou's feet surged to both sides like ocean waves; and he was sliding backward.

Because he doesn't weigh much, just like a normal teenager; to avoid the embarrassment of being knocked away, he would stick the toes of his shoes into the ground to stabilize himself in situations where he was about to be punched.

However, the sales department's budget for tiles was clearly not as high as that for bulletproof glass:

Ping ping ping ping
Despite holding onto Marie Inoue's severed hand, she was still being pushed around; the tiles beneath her feet kept breaking into smaller fragments, which flew to both sides like smoke, dust, and sparks.

Marie Inoue was like a skeleton athlete, using her broken arm to push her chubby body forward until they both crashed out of the sales office—
Bang!
The bulletproof glass shattered, and the door frame spun in a parabolic arc before falling into the distance.

"Ouch! It hurts so much!"

Pain seemed to be nonexistent for Marie Inoue: even though she cried out in pain quite often, she didn't back down an inch.

Bone against bone, muscle against muscle; after being folded and broken, they rubbed against each other, becoming flattened pieces of trash.

If this hand were sent to the best hospital in the Cochin Autonomous Prefecture now, and subjected to a surgery that would leave all the medical staff drenched in sweat and drowsy, perhaps it wouldn't need to be amputated, and there would still be some possibility of it moving.

"Ma'am, you can't use your hand anymore. Why don't you get a new one? I think your company can replace them."

With a quick twist and pull, like eating a crab leg, he tore off Inoue Marie's broken and flattened right hand, up to her shoulder.

Compared to the power she displayed, Inoue Marie's physical strength was negligible.
She spun twice in the spray of blood mist, then hovered near the shattered door of the business office:

"--Wow, that's fast, like tearing a piece of paper."

The night was quiet, and the streetlights illuminated a few pedestrians in the distance. The pedestrians turned their heads but did not stop walking; plastic bags replaced the fallen leaves of early autumn and fluttered everywhere.

DouDou weighed the severed arm in her hand.

It was heavier than I had imagined; perhaps its bone density and muscle tissue were different from those of ordinary people. The muscle bundles were twisted like wires, and the bones were as hard as alloy.

Greater strength, faster speed, and physical intensity sufficient to withstand this level of sport: but that's about it.

Compared to myself, I'm still too ordinary.
Although she can fly at "ultra-low altitude" in some unknown way, DouDou is quite envious of this.

"You're quite strong, but compared to others, you're very fragile."

DouDou tossed her arm, still with half a sleeve attached, aside, her voice tinged with displeasure:

"I'm not complaining, but why is it just this kind of hand-to-hand combat? I thought you had something new and exciting. Don't you have any battle plans or anything?"

At least in his own understanding, in a simple physical confrontation, few people could gain the upper hand; and it wouldn't be very interesting either.

The cut at the shoulder resembled a fountain, yet Marie Inoue remained all smiles.

"Isn't it great? To expand and amplify oneself as a [human] being, to wholeheartedly push the limits of natural functions, and then extend that power to allow the most ordinary strength to blossom and bear fruit. We are all looking forward to something like that, how awesome is that!"

"There's no need to fantasize about fantastical things: just keep what's most comfortable and familiar—no longer yourself, but still yourself."

"I'm honored to have this power, it's a bit like yours, isn't it?" Well—this kind of fighting, where you throw a punch and I throw a punch, and everyone touches each other, doesn't really interest DouDou.

The people he encountered were like clay figurines, crumbling at the slightest touch.

Just like how DouDou doesn't actually like talking when she's fighting.
"Humans can't fly. And you can only float a little bit, it's making such an exaggeration."

The battles were all slow-paced, and DouDou had to fill the gaps with conversation to avoid awkward silences.

"Do you have self-healing abilities? Like super strong recovery power, otherwise this feels like self-destruction, you'll turn into dust in a while."

"Your boss was telling me a secret, and you just interrupted him like that; at least come up with something fun, right?"

"Or you could tell me what happened? It wouldn't hurt to hear your version of the story."

"You must have some reason for wanting to fight me: why do you have to pick a fight with me for no reason?"
-
Marie Inoue suddenly looked up, as if she had finally remembered a topic to discuss:

"Hey, hey! If you could get even stronger, what would you want? How about Superman's laser eyes?"

He regained some energy—but was still a bit sleepy. He yawned.
"No, no, I don't like that. Of course, being able to shoot things out of your eyes is pretty cool too."

"I want eyes like super flashlights, shooting out beams like searchlights, not those thin beams. And when that light shines on something, that thing melts away: pretty cool, right?"

Marie Inoue's lips drooped. Her makeup, a mixture of dust and blood, made her look like a demon.

"Don't do that, don't do that; why aren't you responding to me? You should say you like laser eyes! You want to see laser eyes!"

"Are you already bored? Saying that on a date with a girl is incredibly rude!"

"Actually, I'm a bit like Superman, just not as well-equipped! People used to call me Super OL, Super White-Collar Worker, and things like that. Back then, I couldn't fly like I can now; I could only lift my feet off the ground a little bit."

"Come on, let me show you this move."

Marie Inoue's eyes turned comically to the center, becoming cross-eyed; only the index and middle fingers of her left hand were resting on her temples.

Suddenly, two dim red dots appeared at the tips of the false eyelashes.
Sizzle.
The dimness turned bright, until it became two blazing, swirling fireballs; Marie Inoue's false eyelashes burned, curled, and fell off, and the smell of burning filled the air.

"Oh no, my makeup's come off—it's so hot! I can't see anything, I can't see anything!"

Marie Inoue screamed in agony, but her grin only grew wider.

In the blink of an eye:

Her eye sockets were swollen and peeling from the high temperature, covered with blisters, and her eyeballs were deformed and curled up, like rotten and spoiled fruit—only they had shrunk, carbonized, and turned black in the high temperature; the water in her eyeballs, which accounted for more than 80 percent of her eyeballs, evaporated with the rapidly rising temperature.

However, the red lines from the two points of light shot out, diagonally intersecting along the line of sight and converging right in the center of the eyes:

It immediately coiled and spun; then suddenly expanded, twisting into a thick, blood-red pillar of light.

boom!
(End of this chapter)