#23. DXCVI (3) – An Intentional Approach?
Was this an intentional approach? If so, then the identities of these approaching things might be outposts planted by imperialists. If the Round Table's outpost bastards were nearby, they would have surely seen the abnormally prolonged flash of lightning when I tested the forest's magic. The noise of the discharge might have been swallowed by the fog, but the light would have spread even farther.
In that case, there was ample reason for them to approach with suspicions. I wanted to confirm whether the ones here were the Pathfinder crew in their insulated fireproof suits, or a grand magus on the run, sneaking in to observe the giant's soul. It wasn't impossible that they'd taken a wrong turn and stumbled into a death trap. In a 2,700-acre forest, the odds of such a random encounter were low—but if asked whether it was possible at all, the answer had to be "Yes."
I shrank the radius of my mana field, preparing for interception and ambush. Not to evade an Awakened's senses, but to evade the forest's detection. The giant's spiritual net of sensation. Multiple perilous paths that could only be traversed with a mana field smaller than the net's mesh. In sections where the giant's senses grew so dense even a non-Awakened could detect souls, I groped forward solely by sight, turning back as needed. For over ten minutes, I moved silently, adjusting my mana field's radius.
I arrived at a scene where fresh corpses were being actively absorbed as the forest's nutrients.
Tsk... I clicked my tongue in dissatisfaction. The forest's decomposition ability was so exceptional that the information readable from the bodies had drastically diminished. Even in forests with unusually high densities of awakened trees, decomposition didn't proceed this quickly. The grotesque sight of lukewarm corpses split and dragged in all directions laid bare the Trembling Giant's gluttony.
Still, the arduous trek here hadn't been in vain. Wiping sweat from my brow after sprinting with a minimized mana field, I reconstructed the mass slaughter's sequence based on bone marks, corpse spacing, footprints on the ground, a handful of intact belongings, and lingering scents in the air. Causes of death for each, order of demise, cover efficiency, movement direction and formation, and the direction they'd been facing just before dying...
'Sending this many heavily armed personnel isn't normal.'
If they'd been an expedition commissioned by the government or a research institute, their armament level should have been restrained. Yet not only were there many of them, but their carried weapons and gear surpassed a typical army. They surely hadn't brought weapons to fight the Trembling Giant. Against a poplar cluster whose estimated mass had swelled to 170,000 tons, what use were conventional firearms? No matter the caliber, they meant nothing to the Trembling Giant. Silencers on the muzzles were even more pointless.
Judging by the scattered combat traces, they hadn't been targeting me specifically. But regardless, these were unmistakably human hunters who'd come to capture and kill someone.
They hadn't entered this death trap by mere mistake.
As I habitually photographed the traces while tracing the battle, a sudden snap of breaking branches reached my ear.
Crack!
"...!"
A survivor? But I saw nothing.
Scanning the direction of the sound, I caught a black silhouette fleeing amid the white trunks shrouded in fog. An outline of a human that lacked even the minimal mana field any living soul-bearing creature should possess—impossible in its very motion. Even in the vision revealing the essence of all things, the interior of the fleeing human's outline was a black opacity indistinguishable from normal sight.
I'd witnessed something exactly like it once before. An opacity even the Golden Age's Eye couldn't pierce.
Grace.
Before I could call out, a flashbang and fragmentation grenade combo hurtled toward me like a fastball. Tossed over the shoulder by the runner leaping five or six meters per stride without looking back. Primed not with pulled pins but ignition incantations.
With my nerves on edge, I instantly expanded my mana field to activate ignition suppression.
Thud.
A flashbang and grenade dropped limply. Swiftly retracting my mana field to evade the giant's senses, I neutralized the attack effortlessly—yet felt a heavy bewilderment regardless.
If that runner was Grace, the situation was utterly bizarre. A woman who could crush most Round Table Masters opting to flee from me alone? Even if she'd sensed something extraordinary about me, it didn't sit right.
As the forest's wrath subsided, I pursued the runner, shouting.
"Stop! Let's talk! I'm not your enemy!"
The fleeing figure, accelerating with the flowing hem of her open-sided nun's habit, replied to my call with a sharp curse.
"Fuck off!"
"..."
Fine. Beating her half to death first would make conversation safer anyway. Chasing blindly risked traps.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-thud!
Full-auto fire while running disrupted the receding silhouette. A streak of blood sprayed in the dense fog. And a scream.
"Agh!"
Short and frail—a far cry from the infamous witch's notoriety.
'What the hell is that?'
Yes. 'That thing' was the only fitting term.
Harboring suspicions, I continued the chase. The prey, shoulder pierced by the bullet, now deployed a mana field to draw in mana essence. It had simply been suppressed to hide until now. Yet at the field's core lingered the same black, opaque void. A faint glow rippled only at the bullet wound. Some concealment magic I didn't know.
The prey's flight speed outpaced a typical Awakened's sprint. Moreover, it seemed intimately familiar with the forest's circuit structure here—utilizing cover expertly, varying its mana field radius by section to skillfully disrupt the giant's senses.
But that alone wouldn't shake me.
Rat-tat-thud!
My shots this time sheared slender poplar stems along the escape path. As shattered branches and leaves scattered, the nearby forest circuits flared like ignited fire.
"Urgh—!"
The runner's slight frame shook in the fierce wind. Seizing the moment, my subsonic AP rounds landed another hit amid the barrage. Momentum unbroken, the side-torn target tumbled noisily across the ground.
Boom!
A gunshot unlike mine echoed. Mid-tumble, the target drew a stubby double-barrel shotgun from inside her habit's hem for a counterattack. My violin case, facing forward, clattered as it deflected the buckshot pellets.
Each pellet finely infused with mana. Meaning each contained a human soul.
The enchantment on the buckshot neutralized telekinesis. Without the bulletproof case as a shield, the giant's belly environment would have weakened my telekinesis too much for full defense.
But considering the time to craft it, the waste versus effect was immense. At least an hour of a grand magus's manpower per shell—not some decisive superweapon.
No sane person would bother making such ammo.
Tearing up as she glared from afar, the prey's face was unmistakably a witch's.
Even amid the perilous fight, my suspicions deepened.
'Is she really insane? Or multiple personalities?'
Click! Kakakakakang!
The new sidearm from her thigh was a Russian assault rifle brutally shortened. No stock, barrel halved. Yet an Awakened's strength controlled the recoil for practical accuracy. Desperate screams mixed with the spraying fire.
"Just leave me the fuck alone, you bastard spawn!"
Rough words, aristocratic English accent. But the content baffled me. Bastard spawn? What group did she think I belonged to?
Under the forest's singular overwhelming dominance, our skirmish inevitably turned primitive. The dubious-sane nun mixed attack incantations into shooting gaps to disrupt me.
Whoosh!
Crimson flash exploded outward in the fog. The heat projectile, bound straight by incantation, lost cohesion upon crossing my mana field's boundary and collapsed. But its collapsing light and heat sufficed to dazzle normal vision.
Useless trick. Residual light affecting only normal sight didn't hinder my aim.
Rat-tat-thud!
Enduring the scorching radiant heat, my shots elicited another frail scream. Believing she'd disrupted my sight, the nun rolled to expose her upper body—only for her shoulder, healing via "Life," to burst again. Gasping, she collapsed behind cover.
Sweat beaded on her brow beneath a tear-distorted face brimming with pain, rage, and despair.
Kakakakang!
One advantage of the Golden Age's Eye in a firefight: seeing enemy mag remaining in real-time. The instant her suppressive fire from cover ticked empty, I broke cover and full-auto aimed at her gun hand.
"Augh... Hic, sob..."
Enhanced hearing caught the tiny sound amid echoing shots. Her middle and ring fingers severed, hand flayed, she trembled and sobbed.
Stupid. She should have used telekinesis. Pure telekinetic shooting had low accuracy, wasting ammo—but for suppression where hits didn't matter, no need for hands.
Drooling saliva and tears, she didn't seem feigned, but I couldn't trust the apparent fragility. Approach and capture only after total neutralization. Maybe all her clumsy shows were deliberate acting.
Reloading, I thought:
'Acting or not, isn't it time for dizziness to set in?'
"Life" reinforced and accelerated, not creating from nothing. Considering blood lost and nutrients burned sustaining the incantation, her consciousness should be dulling now. Magical opacity hid vitals, preventing certainty.
The nun kept fleeing despite wounds. As hunter, I twisted her escape routes, waiting for exhaustion. Twisting paths avoided her traps. My improved eyesight from training still had visibility limits here—blind pursuit was suicidal.
"Hahk, hahk..."
Fog thinned deeper in. Proportional to flight time, minor wounds accumulated. Ammo spent, she hurled her gun and finally slumped against a poplar, knees buckling.
Blood stained where her hand pressed. The tree greedily absorbed it upon release.
As I peeked over cover, the seated nun's eyes twisted. Her gaze already unfocused, wavering.
"Die...!"
Shwick!
The devil-worshipping nun telekinetically launched a heavy rifle from leaf litter. A big-bore hunting autoloader from some dead explorer here.
Snatching it with her good hand, she shouldered it kneeling.
Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom!
Muzzle flashes shed greenish rust powder. Misses scratched the giant's innards, triggering reflexive magic. Then click—malfunction from damp primers failing to ignite.
Hissing, she ignited the chamber with mana fire. Forced ignition boomed—but a rusted casing tore, fragment jamming the rifling.
Easily dodging the botched aim with instant cover, enduring the gale, I charged to end the hunt.