Chapter 279: The Blessed Country and the Cursed Human - 2
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 279: The Blessed Country and the Cursed Human - 2
Captain Abbey closed her eyes and unleashed her Unique Magic. Dozens of vines shot out in every direction. The Morning Glory vines, spreading without distinguishing between wall and ceiling, soon reached the other signallers.
The signallers had shut down their minds in the face of the unprecedented crisis, but Captain Abbey patiently prodded them. Before long, the signallers each activated their own Unique Magic and synchronized with her.
‘Requesting communication from Signaller Ivy.’
‘Signaller Ivy is a person of interest who led the hostile entity here. Request denied.’
‘Counterargument. If she possesses a means to explain the current situation, this Module is required to collect it.’
While the other side was in disarray, Captain Abbey transmitted her powerful will through her Unique Magic.
‘This is a demand from Signaller Ivy! As of this moment, this is a state of emergency for you and the entire Military State! Return to your rooms at once and respond to this communication!’
Synchronization magic is mutual. If one side is affected, the other is bound to be as well.
However, one with a firm sense of self is not so easily swayed by minor influences. Captain Abbey steadily encroached upon the signallers’ minds. Following her command, they returned to their respective rooms.
“Abbey!”
It seemed the communication had reached Eimeder as well. Just as it was about to charge toward us, Historia grabbed onto it, holding it back. Bang, bang! Two shots were aimed at Eimeder’s face. It was forced to defend itself with its wings, causing it to miss its chance.
Good. It seems he’s wary of Captain Abbey.
“So, my job is to buy time until Captain Abbey is finished?”
Buying time. Seems like that’s all I’m ever good for…
As I muttered self-deprecatingly, the angel’s wings twitched unnaturally. For a moment, I thought I saw a pure white feather flick through the air toward me.
A cowardly long-range attack? Since it was a wing that moved, even my mind-reading couldn’t pick it up!
As I flinched, caught completely off guard, Azzy shot up like a bolt of lightning and snatched the feather out of the air. Landing gracefully, she chewed and shredded the soft feather, barking triumphantly.
“Woof!”
“…Good girl, Azzy.”
She can’t fight him, but she’s great at catching his feathers. I guess she is a Beast King, after all. When I praised her with genuine feeling for the first time in a while, Azzy yelped bravely.
“Leave to me! Go!”
“Don’t rush me. If I go in recklessly, I’ll be the one who dies.”
“Woof? No die! Live!”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one fighting an angel…”
“I’d lose!”
I was about to get angry, but thinking rationally, she was right. Right. It’s not like I could fight him either.
Still, I think I can help in other ways. If not with strength, then with wisdom.
I unfurled the Queen of Fabric. A hideous hole was torn in the middle of this precious cloth that had saved my life from the angel. The waste of it stung, but now was the time to use even this as an opportunity.
With my left hand, I drew a card and transformed it into a skewer. I twirled the skewer in my grip and poked at the hole. Simultaneously, I channeled mana into my right hand. I drew a transmutation circle in blue light, attempting an extremely condensed form of alchemy.
“Set. Re. Alke.”
I cut the Queen of Fabric, using the hole as the center. I took the square piece of cloth and, with all my might, pressed and rolled it into a tight cylinder. My old skills from rolling mana herbs hadn't faded, and the Queen of Fabric was rolled quite sturdily.
It was a very, very basic form of alchemy that only changed an object’s shape while leaving its material structure intact. The form was crude, but it would be more than enough for Historia to use.
“Ria! Catch!”
I threw the rolled-up Queen of Fabric to Historia. With perfect timing, Historia, having just broken away from Eimeder, reached a hand behind her and caught it without looking.
Confirming the object in her hand, Historia muttered.
“…A mana herb?”
“It’s a bullet! Shoot it!”
Historia’s gun isn’t restricted by standard ammunition. It works by compressing and detonating Qi, so it doesn’t need gunpowder. And even if a projectile doesn’t fit the barrel, she can just force it in and fire.
“I think not!”
Eimeder charged, as if to deny her even a moment to reload. Four wings closed in from all sides.
But Historia’s reloading was as unique as her gunshots. She flicked the bullet with her finger, then leaped into the air to evade the attack. In mid-air, she performed the trick of catching the bullet with the muzzle of her gun. The bullet slid backward down the barrel.
It was a brute-force reload, the kind one might have seen in the age of muskets. Though her pistol already had a few rounds in it, the bullet I made was loaded, ignoring the sequence.
“For a creature of the earth to leave the ground…! How absurd!”
The wings pursued Historia. They moved at a speed that was difficult to track with the naked eye. Now that she was airborne, there was no way for her to dodge.
But if she had intended to dodge, she wouldn’t have jumped into the air in the first place.
Despite not knowing what I had given her, Historia trusted my bullet. Was it a calculation that she couldn’t win anyway? Or did she just trust me that much? From the start, she had been waiting for a bullet, her gun already charged with a massive amount of Qi.
Now that she had the bullet, all she had to do was fire. Historia naturally aimed the gun.
“Fire!”
Thump. Perhaps because it was made of cloth, the gunshot was dull. The rolled-up fabric was sucked toward the angel’s wing. A plume of feathers rose to meet the bullet.
In that instant, a pure white light exploded.
The Queen of Fabric—a precious cloth that swallowed light on the inside and reflected it on the outside. The bullet made from it tore through the angel’s light, scattering it in every direction.
The bullet, having completely obliterated one wing, veered slightly and embedded itself in the ceiling. The angel now had only five wings.
It worked. I just need to make five more!
Just as a faint smile touched my lips.
“Tricks…”
A new wing sprouted from the angel’s back. I muttered, feeling utterly deflated.
“Am I the con artist here? That’s the real cheat.”
The angel, clearly displeased by having its wing torn off, turned its head toward me and growled.
“To think a tool of the mortal race, devoid of any Arcane, could…!”
“No, Huey! This is enough! Just this is…! Ugh!”
Eimeder closed in on Historia as she was shouting desperately. It attacked in a frenzy, violently smashing through walls and floors with its wings.
‘If I can just disrupt the light for a moment, there might be a chance! Just three shots! Just enough to use my Axiom! Zero In is a guaranteed hit…!’
Alright. She needs a few more? Three more, that’s plenty!
My hands moved busily. My mana-herb-rolling skills hadn’t gone anywhere, and in an instant, three more bullets were ready. I gauged Eimeder and Historia’s movements and threw the bullets in the direction she was retreating. For me, who could read thoughts, predicting Historia’s movements was an easy task.
At that exact moment, Historia pulled back. Just as she shifted her center of gravity backward to catch the bullets I’d thrown.
“How shallow. I see right through you.”
Eimeder spread its wings wide. The angel’s body stopped short in mid-air, then sharply pivoted to target me.
Oh, so he’s targeting the supply line instead of the combat unit. An angel of the Military State, indeed. Even his strategy is militaristic.
Wait, does that mean I’m… screwed?
While I hesitated, Eimeder charged with terrifying momentum, tearing up the ground indiscriminately with its wings. Azzy’s fur stood on end.
“Huey!”
Realizing what was happening, Historia clutched the bullets and hastily pursued the angel’s tail. But Historia had no wings, and the angel only grew more distant.
With no other option, Historia aimed her loaded gun. But…
‘It’s just… wings.’
The angel’s wings extended from its back. Moreover, the uppermost wing was covering its back, as if wary of her. Her line of fire was completely blocked by wings.
‘I can’t… shoot. All it would do is destroy one wing.’
Historia’s thoughts raced. A retreating enemy. A visible back. A gun in her hand. An ally to protect. In this moment of crisis, Historia’s concentration reached its absolute peak.
However…
‘There’s no way.’
The scales of her thoughts gradually tipped toward despair. Her outstretched hand was useless. The enemy was moving, but Historia’s hand seemed to have forgotten how.
‘But I have to shoot. If I don’t, Huey will die. But how?’
There was no answer. It was hopeless. The strength drained from her gun hand. The wavering muzzle of the gun came into her view.
‘…I’m stronger when I don’t shoot. Because the enemy is wary of my bullet.’
Don’t shoot. When facing the Camarilla, Historia had found great success with that strategy. The Camarilla had avoided entering her line of fire, giving her an advantage, as if she were wielding a sword with an invisible blade.
‘But I have to shoot. In the end, they’re only wary because my bullet will eventually be fired.’
Not shooting is stronger. But she has to shoot.
A paradox.
Something impossible by logic.
But the last of the principles of Heaven and Earth—Li (離)—touches upon the Axiom of the world. It achieves paradox, even if it means twisting the world’s very principles.
It is different from a Unique Magic. A Unique Magic is, so to speak, a declaration to the world, overwriting it with the new rules of one’s own Spiritual World. It proclaims new laws and brings all under its dominion.
But Li (離) is, to put it another way, a tantrum. It is a terribly childish passion that throws a fit at the world to create a single exception that deviates from all common sense.
Amidst the paradox, an image flashed through Historia’s mind.
The Regressor. Shei. An absolute powerhouse who wielded an invisible sword and manipulated space at will. She could freely extend and retract the length of her sword, firing her Qi blade like a gun.
‘His invisible sword…’
In that life-or-death moment, what came to Historia’s mind was the image of the Sky Blade, Chun-aeng.
Historia slightly readjusted her grip on the gun. The muzzle was not aimed at the angel. It was aimed slightly higher, above the angel’s right shoulder.
If she fired now, she would miss. And yet, seized by a strange sense of elation, Historia fired at that spot.
The bullet was ‘not fired’.
But Historia had definitely ‘fired’.
Within the paradox, the Axiom twisted. A fracture appeared in the air. The bullet did not fly, but every result the bullet could have produced was achieved.
Historia felt a tactile sensation in her gut. Her bullet had definitely ‘touched’ something, somewhere. Gritting her teeth, Historia swung the pistol. The relatively light weapon met with heavy resistance. It felt as heavy as swinging a sword with a blade a hundred meters long.
But, she swung.
The gun—no, the sword—that Historia had driven home. That incomprehensible thing that had made contact within the paradox, severed the Axiom itself.
Consensus of Gun and Sword.
By the time I, who had been reading the distant elation Historia was feeling, came to my senses, the angel—with all three of its right wings torn off—was spinning through the air and crashing into a wall.