Chapter 97 – The assassin entraps
Chapter 97 - The assassin entraps
Translator: VALIANT
We dashed away as the demon was coming at us at an unbelievable speed.
Our destination was the trap located west.
[Say, I realize it’s a bit late to say that, but if the enemy was scattered, perhaps it would’ve been better to keep eliminating them one after another.] (Nevan)
Even though we were running pretty fast, Nevan could afford to keep up and talk.
[You’re right. If we had proceeded like that, we could’ve reduced their forces without letting the demon revive them. But I had two reasons not to.] (Lugh)
[Please do tell.] (Nevan)
[First, because I want to limit the damage done to the city. I don’t know how long it would’ve taken us to go around killing every single one of them. In the meantime, they would’ve killed numerous people.] (Lugh)
[How kind of you.] (Nevan)
[I told you. I don’t let my emotions get the better of me, but I’ll save any lives I can save.] (Lugh)
I didn’t evacuate the residents beforehand for fear that the demon would change his target.
However, by attracting the monsters like that, I could reduce the damage and casualties, and I was prepared to make use of Nevan’s power and my authority as the Holy Knight to guide the evacuation promptly in case something happened.
[In that case, what was the second reason?] (Nevan)
[I wanted to round them up. It’s quicker and safer than trying to kill them one by one.] (Lugh)
After fighting them, I realized.
Although we killed four females, I was once again made aware of the threat that the demon posed.
In the event of a prolonged battle or a sudden encounter, Tarte and Dia would be in danger.
[I understand. You truly are reliable.] (Nevan)
[Save that line for when we’ve defeated them all.] (Lugh)
As we turned around a corner, we arrived at a relatively wide road, though not wide enough to be the main street.
And behind us, the lion pack came into sight.
Finally, the demon makes his appearance. The demon Riogel, a male lion whose presence was overpowering, was here.
The females were already quite large, but the male was even larger than them.
All the demons I had encountered so far were all humanoid, but Riogel was an animal.
His mane, which none of the females had, had a golden color and contained a breathtaking amount of mana.
And upon closer inspection, it seemed to be collecting and storing the mana in the atmosphere.
I surmised that he could use both his own miasma and the mana he had stored up. That detail wasn’t among the information Meena had delivered to me.
…Although, that level of unexpectedness was within my expectations.
I could picture what he was capable of.
[They’re catching up to us! Should we stall them!?] (Tarte)
Tarte shouted in desperation.
As she said, he was closing the distance quite a bit, turning around one corner after another, with the rest of the pack following him.
As for us, we were matching our pace with Dia, who was the slowest among us, so they would probably catch up to us in a dozen or so seconds.
[No, it’s okay. In fact, this works in our favor.] (Lugh)
At this rate, they would catch up to us before we reached the location of the trap, but I just needed to gain a few seconds in the final spurt to get the ideal timing.
[Dia, Nevan, do as we discussed during our meeting. Tarte, carry Nevan on your back.] (Lugh)
[Got it, I’ll start chanting.] (Dia)
[My turn has finally come.] (Nevan)
As they ran, Dia and Nevan started chanting.
They both decelerated as almost all of their mana was dedicated to the activation of powerful spells, leaving them unable to strengthen their physical abilities.
With me carrying Dia and Tarte carrying Nevan, we switched from our long-distance running forms to our short-distance running forms.
Since we were carrying people on our backs, we couldn’t keep this up for very long, but if we dashed as fast as we could, we could buy about ten more seconds before they caught up to us.
And with those ten seconds, we could reach the trap and let the girls complete their incantations.
Seeing us like this, I was convinced that we made a well-functioning team.
I could’ve never taken such measures by myself.
After we sprinted, Tarte and I managed to reach our destination without being caught up.
Behind us were the demon Riogel and his 27 underlings.
Thanks to that long road we took, they were lined up in a straight line.
Both the timing and the situation were perfect.
[Dia!] (Lugh)
[【Steel Wall】!] (Dia)
Dia activated the magic spell she had been chanting for the past while.
It was one of her original spells.
A huge iron wall rose up from underground, blocking the wide path.
If she had skimped on the height of the wall, they could’ve easily jumped over it. As felines, the enemy possessed such high jumping power, I estimated that they would have no problem jumping 6 meters or so.
However, Dia’s【Steel Wall】was 5 meters thick and 10 meters high, an absurdly massive structure.
Since it had such enormous dimensions, it required a long time to chant, and an exhaustive amount of mana to create.
The monsters who were running in the lead flashily collided into it, while the ones who were a bit farther behind them and had the time to react tried to jump over the wall, but 10 meters was too high for them, and as I predicted, they crashed into it when they were about 6-meter high.
In the end, they all crashed like in a traffic accident, causing chaos among them.
Even so, we couldn’t let our guard down.
They were in a panic right now, but the moment they regained their composure, they would realize that they could just jump over the houses on both sides.
Which is why we were going to settle this here and now.
[【Stun Flare】.] (Nevan)
Next, it was Nevan who completed her chant.
This was another original spell of which I gave the outline to Dia so she could develop it.
And it was also an original light spell.
Dia only learned light magic a few days ago, but she managed to complete it in time.
A ball of light the size of a man’s head drew a parabola and flew over the wall to the site of the traffic accident.
[Everyone! Turn your backs to the iron wall!] (Lugh)
A second later, without making a sound, a flash of light that seemed to paint the world in white was emitted.
【Stun Flare】wasn’t an offensive spell.
It was a suppression spell.
Its true form was simply an intense light.
But what would happen if Nevan, who was one of the five most powerful mages in the country, fired it at full force?
It didn’t just cause something as mild as temporary blinding, it instantly burned out your retina and took away your sight forever.
It was an eye killer, so to speak. The lion pack, which was already in a state of confusion, grew even more agitated as their eyes got burned.
Dia stopped them with her【Steel Wall】, and Nevan threw a【Stun Flare】at them.
With this, we had finally cleared the prerequisite.
[Put on your masks and keep your backs against the wall!] (Lugh)
While shouting those instructions, we put on masks that covered our entire faces, then I pressed a switch I had kept in my jacket.
The houses surrounding the immobilized lion pack exploded.
I purchased those houses in advance and planted homemade bombs in them.
But those bombs weren’t designed to kill.
I wasn’t optimistic enough to think that some bombs the size of ones that could be placed in those houses could kill the demon and all his followers.
Those bombs were smell and noise bombs.
The sound of those bombs was so loud it broke glass all across the city, and the world was tainted by an ultra pungent smell.
They were also exceedingly powerful.
The sound blasted their eardrums, shook their brains, and destroyed all three of their semicircular canals.
And the smell could make any sturdy man faint instantly, destroying their olfactory receptors with a huge load of it.
If it weren’t for our special masks, we would’ve lost our senses of hearing and smell for the rest of our lives.
Immediately after the explosion, I started chanting while running beyond the【Steel Wall】.
I went across the lion pack, yet I managed to pass through without a hitch.
That was a given.
The【Stun Flare】spell burned out their retinas and blinded them, and my trap tore their eardrums and wrecked their noses.
Since their senses of sight, hearing and smell had been destroyed, they couldn’t see or sense anything.
Their strength lied in their superior senses. Their ultra keen ears and noses backfired, and the damage was considerable.
That was my goal all along.
Rather than firepower that couldn’t finish them off completely, I went for neutralizing them completely.
Now that we had laid the groundwork, we could target the demon Riogel without being hindered by his underlings.
He was in the middle of regenerating himself with his demonic powers, but he still couldn’t see us.
I took out a specially made turret from my【Leather Crane Bag】.
The shells used were 720 mm, six times the size of those I used for【Cannon Strike】.
Also, it had a flat tip, and barbs all over.
That’s right, I was only going to use it to blow the demon far away, preventing him from regenerating his harem while we wiped them all out in one go.
It wasn’t designed to penetrate, but to bite into the flesh of the target and blast him away with kinetic energy.
Since it was loaded with Fahr Stones, I could fire it even as I dedicated all my mana to the incantation of the spell.
[【Cannon Strike】!] (Lugh)
The special warhead was ejected.
His cronies weren’t the only ones who had their eyes, ears, and noses wrecked, it was the same for Riogel too, and he hadn’t regenerated them yet.
It only took a single blow. Or rather, it was supposed to.
『I guess he’s not called the King of Beasts for nothing, huh.』(Lugh)
I praised him in my mind.
Even though he shouldn’t have been able to see it, he deflected my【Cannon Strike】with his right arm at a speed that slightly exceeded the speed of sound.
[I see you…!!] (Riogel)
His right arm was blown off after he deflected the shot, but the bullet missed its target, who was still sitting there.
I can’t believe he managed to defend against it.
I was shocked, but thanks to that, I didn’t waste my insurance.
I ran right after that【Cannon Strike】, and as soon as I finished chanting, I touched the demon Riogel from the blind spot created by the loss of his right arm.
The spell I was chanting as I ran to him.
It was the killing technique…
[God spear,【Gungnir】.] (Lugh)
In terms of sheer firepower, it was the strongest spell I had.
Although, it was a defective product that took more than 10 minutes to land.
However, there was a secret way to use it.
Instead of sending a spear into the air to hit the enemy with it, I shot the enemy himself into the air.
He would soar up until he was about to reach outer space, and then crash down.
No living creature could survive a move like that.
It was one of my Hero-killing tactics.
However, this had a different weakness from the spell I normally used. Because this required a huge amount of mana, I couldn’t use it to enhance my physical abilities.
Therefore, I had to touch the target with my regular physical abilities.
I didn’t feel like I could do the same in a battle against the Hero.
However, if it wasn’t in battle but during an assassination, then I could touch her before she could even consider starting a battle.
Currently, it was the tactic with the highest chance of killing the Hero.
[Enjoy your trip to the skies.] (Lugh)
[You damn braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat…!!] (Riogel)
He screamed as he ascended higher and higher to the sky.
He was bound to die from that before resurrecting himself.
But that was fine.
All I needed was to buy time, and I had plenty enough of it before he fell back down.
[Tarte, Dia, Nevan. Once we’ve slaughtered and cremated all of those monsters, we’ll head to the demon’s crash site.] (Lugh)
All we had here were helpless lionesses deprived of their senses of sight, hearing, and smell.
Killing them was now just a walk in the park.
And if we completely burned them to ashes, Riogel would be unable to resurrect them.
Moreover, I had calculated where he would crash.
I could now take on the demon Riogel without his underlings getting in the way.
[Wow. You really do use the nastiest methods.] (Dia)
[As expected of Lugh-sama!] (Tarte)
Dia and Tarte emerged from behind the wall and disposed of the lionesses one by one, even as we talked.
[So this is how assassins fight. You have to remain logical on every point, make careful preparations, keep blocking your opponents’ strengths, and kill them without letting them do anything. Absolutely wonderful.] (Nevan)
If they’re powerful as a pack, make it impossible for them to function as such.
If their five senses are superior, spoil them.
It was as simple as that.
Facing the enemy head-on was the kind of approach I preferred to leave to knights.
[This time, we had enough information. If you have information, you can make the right preparations. Assassination is all about how much of the groundwork you lay before you kill.] (Lugh)
Actually swinging the blade was merely the finishing touch.
The process leading up to that point was the real merit of an assassin.
And even the slaughter of this harem was just part of the preliminary works, but this time, the objective was to kill the demon Riogel.
That’s why we couldn’t let our guard down.
Not until he had drawn his last breath.