Book 5. Chapter 47: Trial Passed
The boy’s gauntlet snapped onto sights, and then opened fire. All barrels in sequence. There was no escape.
He’d been outplayed.
Tenisent watched the damage pile up. Mechanical systems failed first.
Movement to the arms, legs, chest. Joints sized up as pressurized artificial muscles lost integrity in keypoints. Redundant systems took over, held for a moment, then snapped away as more damage accumulated.
That was only after the first shotgun shell breached his armor. The second one took away even more.
Connections to the stolen shell closed off, one after another. Power subroutines redirected flow as a few of the smaller power cells were punched through. Circuits also faded from his command, breaking apart and being replaced by their auxiliary systems located elsewhere. A wide swath of his soul fractals flickered out, punched through by some wayward pellet, or had their power source decoupled.
The cold wind of reality and the void between fractals loomed against his soul as each spare fractal broke away. Tenisent merely shifted around, finding new fractals to inhabit.
The shell did exactly as it was designed to do, adapting to the damage, attempting to remain at maximum possible combat efficiency. That hit lowered him down to eighty three percent.
More shotgun shells slammed into his body, putting a stop to that, each shell knocking larger and larger numbers off his total combat efficiency. He staggered backwards with each hit, as the boy advanced with a steady walk, arm pointed right at his chest.