We tumbled on the dirt as we wrestled for control of the spell-rifle, and I could feel my mana responding to the closeness of the magical weapon. We both fought for it with our hands (or, in the soldier’s case, with a single hand), but also with our mana connection. It was remarkable that he could maintain his grip on the weapon with only a single arm, but I figured his strength was highly increased from cultivation.

Suddenly, with a crackling blast, the weapon discharged. I was thrown a few feet backward and landed on my ass, but the soldier got the blast full in the belly. As I sat up to look, the soldier lay on his back and groaned, clutching at his destroyed stomach, his smoking weapon discarded on the ground in front of him.

”We will stop Armageddon,” he croaked as blood dribbled from his mouth. ”The righteous will find every last one of you.”

They didn’t sound like the words of some grunt working for a corporation. He sounded like a genocidal religious fanatic.

His eyes widened, and he choked as his mouth filled with blood.

I looked up to see that the soldier with the silver knife was getting the better of Astrid. He moved his silver knife in great sweeping arcs, backing the snarling werewolf up against a tree. I didn’t want to think what would happen if he managed to score a hit.

Without giving myself time to consider the morality of my actions, I grabbed the spell rifle from the ground, leveled it at the soldier’s head, and squeezed the trigger.

The fireball that blasted from it gutted my mana pool, and I gasped—I’d forgotten that these rifles were set up for higher level cultivators than me. The recoil knocked me on my ass again, but the blast incinerated my target from the chest upward.

A moment before, he had been menacing Astrid with his blade. Now, he was only half the man he had been—literally. The silver knife dropped to the ground with a clink as all that was left of the soldier crumpled to the ground in a smoking heap.

”Holy shit,” I gasped as I scrambled to my feet. ”I just killed two men.”

“You did,” I heard Astrid say quietly. “And you did a very good job of it too. If it weren’t for your intervention…”

She trailed off. All was quiet in the forest.

I had to force myself to examine the men I’d killed. The spell-rifle had torn a basketball-sized hole through the first one’s torso, and I could see through it to the ground beneath him. The sheer heat of the spell fired by the rifle had cauterized the wound, but it hadn’t left him any less dead.

The same went for the other corpse, though he was harder to look at. I glanced from him to Astrid and back again.