"Fire, quickly, fire!"

  Seeing the girl charging at the troops like a furious beast, eyes burning with rage, all the armored soldiers raised their rifles almost simultaneously and unleashed a precise barrage of gunfire.

  Amid the flickering flashes of bullets streaking across the night sky, Alice, together with Nisha, launched herself at the Empire's soldiers, who looked like robots.

  It must be admitted that the battle had reached a critical point.

  The clash between the “Phantoms” and the “Empire” had hit its peak. After trying to directly withstand three energy cannon blasts from the battleships, Nisha's body was in more pieces than ever before.

  Though she was still trying to shield the girl with all her might, her remaining body could no longer form a perfect defense against the attacks.

  In other words… even if the regular soldiers couldn’t see the weak spots, their powerful projectiles could still reach Alice through the gaps. Faced with such extreme danger, both the tense girl and the remorseful Nisha were forced to unleash their fiercest assault.

  The Little Phantom still didn’t know how to perform ranged attacks, but when it came to dealing with a group of “elite soldiers,” Alice’s close-quarters combat power seemed more than enough.

  “Attack with everything you’ve got! Use the plasma rocket launchers—ah!”

  A sharp cry cut through the night sky, followed by the sound of scalding liquid hitting the ground along with the gleam of a cold blade.

  Apparently, the first “robot” didn’t have time to finish his last words, because an invisible blade had already sliced through his neck.

  And furthermore…

  “Nisha, we have to take out the one with the rocket launcher… the one with the rounded cylinder! We can’t afford to get hit by that again!”

  Alice turned her head cautiously and had already identified the primary threat to the Little Phantom. After all, to Nisha, that plasma launcher was the greatest danger.

  If Alice were struck by a direct plasma blast, who knew if she could still be saved.

  Idealistic anti-entropy lifeforms can recover quickly from injuries and even resurrect after death... but that “quickly” doesn’t mean seconds.

  According to Nisha’s instincts, it would take about the same amount of time it takes Alice to put on her school uniform, roughly ten seconds, to fully regenerate her body. During that time, the girl would have to endure a hail of bullets.

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  That wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t impossible either.

  The Little Phantom had already shown impressive reflexes. Most of the electromagnetic projectiles fired from all directions were being deflected by spinning fragments. Now, all they needed to do was eliminate the three soldiers with rocket launchers on the battlefield… and the rest of the imperial army, including the three battleships in the sky, would no longer pose a real threat.

  “Nisha, we can’t just charge forward in a straight line. You have to remember how to control your strength. Remember how I used to run curves in PE class? Try pushing with force in different diagonal directions to change your path, Nisha, come on!”

  Alice was trying to teach Nisha, right in the middle of battle, the technique of “zigzag movement.”

  After all, charging straight ahead was stupid. If you don’t change direction, you become an easy target for the Empire’s assisted targeting systems.

  But if the movements are unpredictable…

  BOOM!

  Two supersonic rockets were fired, exploding against the scorched ground.

  This time, they missed. Nisha had followed Alice’s “advice” and changed her course, even if clumsily and overshooting, she still managed to grasp the basic idea of “running.” Thus, she was able to randomly pick a side point and push with force to change direction like Alice did.

  It’s worth noting that sometimes, a beating from reality helps any creature recognize their own limits.

  Now, with her body almost completely destroyed, the Little Phantom no longer believed that “there’s no attack I can’t take.”

  “Very good, Nisha, you did it. Even though we’re a little farther from the enemy, we’ve bought ourselves three seconds… Ugh, once we recover, we’ll finish them all. Promise me you’ll try your best to avoid the attacks this time, okay?”

  Pale, Alice murmured her advice. Her head began to spin, as if dizzy.

  She could feel a warm liquid running down her arm to her fingertips, dripping onto the ground. In the light of the electromagnetic bullet trails, she saw a vivid, intense red…

  “This isn’t good. I’ve been hit.”

  She didn’t feel much pain, only a growing tingling in her fingers. A quick glance at her left arm showed that a projectile, who knows from where, had opened a wound in her shoulder, deep enough to reveal the bone.

  Fortunately, the shot missed the center a bit. Otherwise, she would’ve lost the arm.

  “It hurts so much! I need… I need to stop the bleeding! Nisha, end this battle quickly, we can’t waste any more time!”

  With a desperate edge to her voice, Alice tried to press on the “likely” location of the blood vessels. As a doctor’s daughter, she knew that for serious wounds, you have to compress the artery, even without knowing exactly where it is.

  And as her anguish grew, the Little Phantom, even without fully understanding what “being wounded” meant, knew that her “mistress” was slowly losing her life.

  It was clear: it was all her fault, due to her stupidity and arrogance.

  A bitter, heavy feeling, wrapped in silent anger, spread through her… Was this the taste of regret? It was the first time Nisha felt the pain of remorse.

  She didn’t know what the feeling meant, but she knew she had to do something.

  At the very least, complete the mission her little mistress had entrusted to her and learn the new combat technique.

  Most of the time, the Little Phantom hated thinking, and even more so, learning. If she could, she would abandon even the slightest bit of reasoning just to rid herself of the burden of “intelligence.”

  But now… for the first time in her life, Nisha was trying to understand every word the girl said, seriously learning how to avoid enemy attacks.

  Because she needed more strength to protect Alice, to protect the most important part of herself.

  And that protection… started with dodging.