Chapter 96 – The assassin starts a war
Chapter 96 - The assassin starts a war
Translator: VALIANT
We prepared ourselves as we waited for the demon to show up.
The sun was beginning to set, and the city was being dyed in the colors of the evening sun.
The date of the attack specified by the snake demon Meena was yesterday, but there was a possibility that it was a false alarm after all.
Still, I didn’t let my guard down.
It wasn’t uncommon for a date to be off by a day or two.
On the bright side, this extra day allowed me to prepare more carefully.
And I didn’t mind if this turned out to be a false alarm.
It was still a far cry better than not believing Meena’s claims and failing to notice the attack.
Although, it was possible that Meena had already betrayed me at this point, and that she gave me false information to keep me away from the actual attack point.
But distrusting that intel wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere, and at the present, I concluded that our relationship of using each other was still mutually beneficial for us.
Dia, who was cleaning her handgun here at the inn, yawned.
[You don’t seem vigilant at all.] (Lugh)
[I can’t help it. I was on my toes all day yesterday.] (Dia)
[That may be true, but you shouldn’t drop your guard.] (Lugh)
[You’re right, sorry. I need to keep my wits about me.] (Dia)
Dia lightly slapped her own cheeks with both hands.
Tarte, who was also doing maintenance on her handgun, pinched her own cheek.
I guess it was because she remained alert all day yesterday and didn’t get to sleep much.
If anything, it was at night that we had to really watch out, so we took turns staying up.
In my case, I was used to it, and thanks to my【Rapid Recovery】, I only required a very short amount of sleep.
Dia and Tarte, however, weren’t so good at this kind of stuff.
I’ve been prioritizing their physical training and skill acquisition, but perhaps it’s time to get them used to that sort of exercise too.
[…Something’s strange.] (Nevan)
Nevan blurted out in a whisper.
[Did something happen?] (Lugh)
[No, and that’s exactly what’s strange. I’ve had the best soldiers of Romanlung monitoring the area on every side, but I did not receive any regular report from the west.] (Nevan)
[We’ll leave the inn and head west.] (Lugh)
[It doesn’t necessarily mean that the demon has appeared. Besides, in case of no regular report, the other bases should be on their way to check on them, so you may want to wait a bit longer.] (Nevan)
[But we’re talking about the elites of Romanlung here. There’s no way they’d omit to contact us on time just because of a little trouble. We have to head there right away.] (Lugh)
I hung up my【Leather Crane Bag】on my waist.
I already had the rest of my equipment on me.
Dia and Tarte nodded as they equipped their respective pistols, which they had finished maintaining.
[You’re absolutely right, Lugh-sama. I cannot believe my peaceful life has dulled me so much.] (Nevan)
[It could be that nothing’s happening there, but just being able to confirm it is a good enough reason to go.] (Lugh)
And so, we promptly headed off and started running.
We all gathered and headed west.
If the elites of Romanlung lost their lives without even being able to call for help, then this was going to be even more problematic than expected.
Spreading out would be too risky.
[Looks like I was right.] (Lugh)
I didn’t need to cross the outer wall to confirm that the elite soldiers had been killed by the demon.
After all, what was unfolding before my eyes was hell.
The pack of the king of beasts was laying waste to the people.
None of the monsters I had in sight had any mane on them. In other words, there was no demon here, only his underlings.
But just because they were only his minions didn’t mean that we could let our guards down.
Their fangs crunched skulls like sugar cubes, and their claws cut through flesh like butter.
People were screaming and running for their lives.
Being slightly under 2m in height and just over 3m in length, those monsters were one size larger than regular lions.
I used a wind spell for long-range monitoring to scan the surrounding area, but the monsters had scattered in order to efficiently slaughter humans.
Spreading ourselves in the same fashion wouldn’t make our task any easier.
As I was thinking of a strategy, a lioness monster emerged behind a woman running away with her child.
[H-Help me, please!] (Woman)
The lioness was about to seize the mother with her claws.
[【Gun Strike】] (Lugh)
In order to avoid hurting the people in my surroundings with the after-effects, I chose to use not【Cannon Strike】, but【Gun Strike】, which allowed for pinpoint firing.
The ejected tungsten bullet hit the lioness’s forehead, as I intended.
However, a hard sound echoed, and the bullet bounced off.
The lioness lost interest in the mother and her child, and stopped right where she was to scowl at me.
[Get out of here, quick!] (Lugh)
[Y-Yes!] (Woman)
My intervention seemed to have successfully helped someone.
And I also understood something about the monsters.
[So that fur on their body is tougher than steel, huh.] (Lugh)
Otherwise, it wouldn’t have made such a noise.
And there was one more annoying point about them.
My【Gun Strike】could easily penetrate a steel plate, and even if my target was too tough to penetrate, the overwhelming kinetic energy of the gunshot could cause damage in itself.
However, this lioness didn’t catch the shot, she downright warded it off.
Her fur fell from the impact, and the bullet slid over it.
In all likelihood, her body possessed fur as hard as steel, skin with a high degree of elasticity, and a coating of fats and oils that made it slippery.
This rendered bullets ineffective, and slashing and blunt attacks would deal little to no damage.
Such natural features were a real pain to deal with.
[Here it comes!] (Lugh)
I shouted a warning.
My【Gun Strike】from earlier didn’t do any damage to the lioness, but she still found it irritating.
She lunged at me on her own.
[Grraaaaaaaaaaaaahh…!!] (Lioness)
She’s fast.
The explosive power of the felines’ muscles allowed them to reach top speed from the first step.
For this one, it was about 300km/h.
The distance between me and that lioness was 40m. She could close this gap in 0.5s.
There was no way I could finish chanting the【Gun Strike】spell in time.
Not to mention, she had that tough and slippery fur as armor.
I see. Against such outrageous speed and toughness, even the elites of Romanlung would be unable to do anything about it.
But unfortunately for her, that beast is taking me too lightly.
Because she was gifted with overwhelming speed and impregnable fur, her movements were too linear.
I pulled out a pistol I kept hidden in the inner pocket of my jacket.
I originally created it for Tarte and Dia.
It had such a convoluted mechanism that it couldn’t be produced by chanting, so I had to carry it.
However, the upsides were that it could be used without chanting, it had excellent power and accuracy, and it could be fired repeatedly.
Dia’s gun was designed as a self-defense weapon with less recoil, more precision, and more rapid-fire capabilities.
In Tarte’s case, since she didn’t have much talent in marksmanship, I’d come to the conclusion that she could only use hers at very close range, so I abandoned accuracy in favor of firepower.
As for mine, it was a balanced model. I wanted it to pack as much power as it could while allowing for precision firing.
Even if I only had 0.5s to shoot my opponent, I could turn things over if I drew my gun fast enough. After all, I had repeated the same movement tens of thousands of times in my previous life.
Quick draw, a high-speed double shot.
Of course, even if it was more powerful than a【Gun Strike】, it was impossible for a pistol-sized gun to penetrate that hard, slippery fur.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t beat her.
Indeed, if that fur of hers was a nuisance, then I had to aim for the parts of her body that had no fur.
There was one spot that could be considered a vital point for all living creatures : the eyes.
The discharged bullets pierced her eyeballs, tore through the soft and vital organs behind them and killed her instantly.
However, I was unable to kill the momentum of her pounce.
I intercepted her head with the metal sole of my boot.
…Guess I was right. Their fur is like a bed of steel needles. If I had caught it with my bare hands, I would’ve been skewered.
[We’ll lure the monsters here and reduce their number as much as we can!] (Lugh)
In order to slaughter as many humans as possible, the demon Riogel scattered his pack.
In other words, the situation was such that the females couldn’t be revived since they required the touch of the male for that.
I wanted to reduce their number as much as possible while we still had the opportunity.
[Sounds like a plan.] (Dia)
Dia nodded and burned the corpse of the lioness.
If the demon had to touch them to resurrect them, then burning them to ashes was our best move.
That way, they couldn’t recover.
Another lioness appeared, and realizing from the burnt smell that one of her comrades was dead, she stopped slaughtering the town residents, scowled at me, called out for her brethren with a roar, and two more monsters showed up.
Because I murdered one of their own earlier, she was glaring at me with nothing but hatred, yet at the same time, she was wary of me. Otherwise, she would’ve probably attacked me immediately instead of calling her friends.
…That’s how you function as a pack, alright. Their learning ability is high, and their leadership skills are quite something.
Perhaps thinking that three of them would be enough, they finally made their move.
A scattered rush, with the one coming after me running in a zigzag pattern to avoid being aimed at, while the other two went for Tarte and Dia.
If she moved so fast and in such an intricate manner, it was impossible to hit her, much less aim and shoot her eyes precisely.
However, I had plenty of ways to kill her.
If she moved in a zigzag pattern to hinder me from aiming at her, it meant that there was a lot of wasted movement, meaning that she would take more time to come and get me… And I could use that time to chant my spell.
Just a little more, and my incantation will be complete.
[【Wind Cage】] (Lugh)
It was an original wind spell that Dia and I created.
It was a spell that filled a space with a radius of several meters farther ahead with carbon dioxide.
Any living creature that stepped into that space was instantly deprived of the oxygen in its lungs and suffered brain damage, leading to coma and death.
No matter how tough the target’s fur was, as long as she was a living being, she couldn’t escape from that.
That spell was easy to use, and my favorite.
I’m done with this one. Now what about the other two?
I took a look at the other two and broke into a smile. They had grown to be so reliable.
[【Wind Bullet】. Hi-yah! Lugh-sama, I did it!] (Tarte)
Tarte poured her mana into her eyes, and as soon as she ducked her opponent’s claws by the skin of her teeth, she created a mass of wind from the ground and shot her in the jaw.
Since this projectile was made of wind, she couldn’t ward it off with her fur, and the attack violently shook her brain and knocked her out.
And the next moment, when she stopped moving, Tarte stabbed the lioness’s eyes with her knife.
She truly had grown marvelously.
She proved herself an accomplished assassin the moment she delivered that final blow.
【Wind Bullet】was a spell developed by Dia that could be chanted in a very short time.
Although it was only for a very short time, it was impossible to strengthen your physical abilities with mana while chanting. It took an extraordinary amount of courage and concentration to aim for a magical counterattack while you had discarded your physical strength and defense.
There weren’t many knights in this country who could do this.
And as for Dia, she apparently opted for a simpler way to win.
[【Flame Stream】. …You won’t get out of this one.] (Dia)
She knew from the earlier cremation that fire was effective.
Therefore, she relied on her vast amount of mana to release a torrent of flames that left no space to escape.
Such a powerful spell required much time to cast it. So she had most likely already started chanting the moment I shouted my warning.
Thanks to the advanced arts of predicting the future and adjusting the completion time of the incantation, she managed to capture such a fast-moving monster with magic.
We heard the sound of applause. It came from Nevan, who was spectating from a distance.
[I already knew you were strong, Lugh-sama, but I didn’t think your two squires would be so formidable. Color me surprised.] (Nevan)
[I wouldn’t have brought them along if they couldn’t keep up with me. Tarte and Dia are my precious assistants and strength.] (Lugh)
Until a little while ago, I would’ve worked on my own without bringing them here.
But the two of them continued to grow, and at last, I could serenely trust them to have my back.
[Fufu…! What a marvelous relationship you have. And so are you, miss maid. I didn’t think you could be this strong despite not having that much talent. I’m suddenly very much interested in you.] (Nevan)
[Talent may be important, but it’s not everything. That aside, we’re finally about to face the real threat.] (Lugh)
There was a reason why we killed the monsters in such a flashy manner.
The enemy had spread out and was slaughtering the residents.
We wouldn’t have made any progress if we had tried to kill each and every one of the scattered monsters, and the enemy was so much faster than us that chasing them down to defeat them was impractical.
More humans would’ve been killed in the meantime.
So, instead of chasing them down, we lured them here.
If they all possessed the same characteristics as felines, then they also possessed a sharp sense of smell. Therefore, they should’ve noticed the smell of their comrades’ burning flesh. And since they were a pack, a family, they would never let us get away with it.
The plan worked.
I got a response from my wind-based monitoring spell. There were several signals heading toward us. And in the center of them all, there was one particularly large presence.
[Now we’re playing tag with our lives in the line. Let’s run!] (Lugh)
[Yessir…!] (Tarte)
[You said you set a trap in a nearby location, right?] (Dia)
I set a trap there in anticipation for this.
Here, this was the right timing for us to reach the location of the trap before the enemy caught up with us.
[Nevan, I think it’s time for you to quit standing on the sidelines. Aren’t you fighting with us too?] (Lugh)
[Oh my, if you say so, then I have no choice but to get to work. Such a pity, I was hoping to learn more about you all.] (Nevan)
The enemy had picked up our scents.
They hadn’t spotted us yet, but they were probably following us closely.
Things would get rough if we bumped into such a number of them. Which is why I had to make absolutely sure to catch them in my trap.