Chapter 1398: The Bloody Battle in the Mountains (2)
“Captain, they’re climbing!”
“Hold fire until they close—we don’t have machine-gun ammunition to spare!”
Cat’s Claw found his position and raised the Van’er rifle. While he waited, he tracked the floating island’s silhouette against the sky. Something had changed. Before, he could just make out its edges; now only the craggy underside was visible, dark and absolute as a ceiling dropped too low. He couldn’t be certain whether it had risen or merely drifted closer, but the island’s shadow had already swallowed a corner of the Impassable Mountain Range. The thought of fighting beneath it pressed against his chest like a stone.
We have to kill these demons and get off this mountain before that thing arrives.
Probably thinking the same, the machine-gun squad opened up the moment the Spider Demons crossed the five-hundred-meter mark—tongues of fire raking the slope in long, deliberate sweeps.
The valley turned loud.
Cat’s Claw waited for the 150-meter line, the range he trusted most, then squeezed the trigger.
“Fire!”
Every muzzle kicked at once, throwing up a white curtain of disturbed snow.
None of them were marksmen in any formal sense, but most had modified their rifles under Van’er’s influence. In semi-automatic mode, a Van’er rifle that didn’t jam could pour fire nearly as fast as the machine-gun squad. Against the miniature Spider Demons—compact, fast, and built to absorb punishment—concentrated firepower stopped being a tactic and became a theology.
Then a black light pulsed out of the forest.
It moved like a ripple on still water, fast and enormous, passing through every soldier on the line in less than a second. Gone before anyone could react. If not for the trembling of the men beside him, Cat’s Claw would have dismissed it as a trick of the eye.
“Did you see that?”
“Some kind of black wave?”
He ran his hands over his body. Nothing felt wrong. The defensive line still held, still firing. A comrade slammed a fresh magazine home and spoke without looking up: “Probably from one of those stone pillars. They’re strange things—rock on the outside, meat inside.”
Cat’s Claw let it go. Whatever the ripple was, the approaching Spider Demons were the more immediate problem. But within seconds he noticed the snow ahead looked darker, as though a cloud had eaten the sun.
Has the island already reached the mountains?
He looked up.
The island was still in its place. But the sky had become something else entirely.
The clear afternoon had gone black in the span of a breath. Gold light gathered in the darkness above—not sunlight breaking through cloud, but something being accumulated, concentrated, drawn inward with visible intent. The speed of the change was wrong for weather. It was wrong for anything natural.
Every soldier on the line felt it.
In ten seconds, the dark mass sealed off the last of the daylight. Ten thousand threads of golden light continued braiding themselves together, brightening steadily toward a threshold Cat’s Claw could feel in the back of his teeth rather than see with his eyes.
Where have I seen this before—
He yanked the bugle horn from his belt. He never got it to his lips.
The sky broke open.
Lightning descended in a circular ring and kept expanding—bolt after bolt hammering down onto the assault force’s defensive perimeter in an unbroken sequence, methodical as a blacksmith at an anvil. The continuous roar of gunfire stopped all at once.
“Is that—the Sigil of God’s Will?”
On the Seagull, Wendy’s voice came out barely above a whisper.
“Even if it isn’t, it’s something close to one.” Andrea’s expression had gone very still. “Lightning—are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” The voice came through the Sigil of Listening without a tremor. “It knows I’m here.”
“Then stay back. This is no longer your fight.” Andrea had recognized the black ripple the moment it appeared. She had seen it before, at Taquila—the Magic Slayer’s reach, diffused across the entire field. Its specialty was killing agility-type powers at range. For Lightning, even a partial strip of her ability would be a death sentence: inertia and speed miscalculating mid-flight, a plummet instead of a dive. The enemy had clearly intended to clip her wings before engaging.
What had saved Lightning was Wendy’s warning. She hadn’t charged in, and the remaining energy in her body had let the wave wash through her without taking hold.
“Get Maggie to warn the reinforcements—the assault force may be compromised.” Andrea turned to Sylvie. “Have you located the target?”
Sylvie had pulled her knees against her chest without realizing it. “It’s already moving up the slope, fast. No Eye Demons nearby that I can detect, so I don’t think we’ve drawn its attention yet. But the lightning strike—the defensive line won’t be able to hold the Spider Demons back much longer.”
The Monstrous Beast’s stone needles, then. The soldiers were nearly in range.
Andrea filed that away and returned to the aiming lens.
Finding the Magic Slayer through the scope had taken effort—and what she found made the breath leave her body slowly, the way cold does. It wasn’t just fast. It flickered, direction changing without the deceleration that physics required, present in one position and then another with no legible arc between. A clean shot would demand near-zero distance. Even using her ability, she needed the bullet’s flight time to be almost nothing; otherwise the target would simply not be where the bullet expected.
What also held her attention: this Magic Slayer bore none of the blue barrier the others had worn in the First Army’s battles. Speed alone didn’t explain the absence of a protective field. She put that question away for later.
The dark clouds hadn’t dispersed. Gold light was gathering again—a second Sigil of God’s Will already charging.
She had no more time for questions.
“We go down,” Andrea called to Wendy. “Same method we used on Hackzord. Close the distance and I can make sure it has no angle to dodge.”
“How close?”
“As close as possible without entering its reach.”
A pause. Wendy’s voice came back measured, the tone she used when calculating wind. “That would be difficult. If Her Highness Tilly were piloting it would be manageable, but Shavi is at the controls now. I’d need to stabilize multiple wind vectors simultaneously while tracking the target—it isn’t simple.”
“You’re saying it can’t be done?”
“I’m saying it won’t be easy.” Another pause—shorter this time. “Well. I’m old, but doing this once shouldn’t leave too lasting a mark.”
Andrea looked at her, then felt the corner of her mouth pull.
She thought of what Lightning had once said: everyone sees Wendy as the gentle one, the steady warmth at the center of things. Lightning had said it like it was something they were all complicit in missing—that under that softness was something that had once walked up to Cara in the Witch Cooperation Association’s dungeon and used her ability, with total precision, to shatter a God’s Stone of Retaliation and pull Nightingale back from the dark.
“Shavi!” Andrea steadied her voice. “Push the control stick forward. We’re going in.”
Chapter 1398 - The Bloody Battle in the Mountains (2)
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
“Captain, they are climbing up!”
“Fire only when they get closer; we do not have as many bullets as the machine gun squad to spare!”
Cat’s Claw found a suitable roosting location and raised his Van’er rifle. While waiting for the enemies, he kept an eye on the position of the floating island. He was unsure if it he was seeing things, but the floating island appeared to rise in altitude. Previously he could barely make out the edges of the island, but all he could see now was the craggy bottom.
But one thing was for sure, the floating island had taken this period of time to close in on the Impassable Mountain Range and its gigantic shadow had covered a corner of the mountains. Upon thinking about the probability of them having to fight under its shadow, Cat’s Claw felt stifled, as though a heavy rock was crushing his back.
We have to get rid of those damned demons and leave this mountain before the floating island arrives.
Probably sharing his thoughts, the machine gun squad finally let loose the moment the Spider Demons entered a range of five hundred meters, spewing out tongues of fire from their muzzles at the targets on the slope.
In that moment, the valley became heated.
Cat’s Claw pulled the trigger when the enemies reached the 150-meter mark, the distance he was most confident of.
“Fire!”
The muzzles of all the guns stirred up a flurry of snow instantly.
Although none of them were professional marksman, the majority of them had modified their weapons under Van’er’s influence. In semi-automatic mode, so long as the Van’er rifle didn’t jam, it could unleash a metal rain not inferior to a machine gun squad’s.
Faced against the tough miniature Spider Demons, the meaning of having concentrated firepower reached a whole new level. If it were the ordinary troops of the First Army equipped with standard issue, it would had been difficult to stop the large quantity of fearless Spider Demons.
Suddenly, a black light shot out from the forest like a huge ripple that instantly penetrated everyone.
It disappeared as fast as it appeared, the entire process taking less than a second. If not for the shivering of the comrades next to him, Cat’s Claw would had thought that it was all an hallucination of his.
“Did… you just see something?”
“It looked like some black ripple?”
Cat’s Claw touched his own body but sensed nothing different. The defensive line did not suffer from any damage, proven by the endless stream of gunshots.
“It most probably came from that weird stone pillar.” A comrade reloaded a new magazine and spoke, “Those things are extremely bizarre, they are clearly rocks on the exterior, but they have flesh and blood inside.”
Cat’s Claw no longer pursued the matter. Compared to the harmless black light, killing the approaching Spider Demons was more important. But he quickly discovered that the snow vista before him had become darker, as though the sun had been blocked.
Damn it, has the floating island already entered the mountainous region?
He raised his head, but was stunned by what he saw.
The fortress was still in its original place, but the sky had changed.
The bright and clear day turned dark and gloomy while golden streams of light shuttled through the dark clouds, as though it was being accumulated. The speed of the sudden change completely surpassed that of any meteorological phenomenon, causing an extreme unease to arise in his heart.
Everyone detected the change above their heads.
In the short span of 10 seconds, the dark clouds had gathered and blocked out all light.
Tens of thousands of lights continued to gather and faintly blossomed in strength.
Why does it feel that we have seen this scene before…
Cat’s Claw suddenly drew out a bugle horn. Right before he could even blow into it, countless lightning bolts smote down through the clouds in a circular radius and continued expanding out, instantly falling right onto the assault force’s defensive perimeter!
The continuous gunshots stopped abruptly.
…
“Is that—the Sigil of God’s Will?” On Seagull, Wendy gasped in disbelief.
“Even if it isn’t the Sigil, I’m afraid it is a similar type of magic stone,” Andrea replied with a serious expression on her face. “Lightning, are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” Her voice came out through the Sigil of Listening. “The enemy should have noticed my presence.”
“Stay there, it is no longer your battle.” Andrea warned. The black ripple that emerged was obviously aimed for Lightning, it was an extremely familiar sight to the Witches that had participated in the ambush at Taquila. It was the special ability Magic Slayers had.
The large-scale emanation of the Magic Slayer’s power was definitely a bane against Lightning’s agile-type powers. Once affected, the simple change in her speed and inertia would lead her to be trapped. The enemy had no doubt considered severing her ability, causing her to drop like a rock before engaging her.
The unfortunate thing was that Lightning took Wendy’s warning and did not charge forward impulsively. This allowed her to shake off the black ripple with the rest of her energy.
“Get Maggie to inform the reinforcements that the assault force might be in trouble.” Andrea looked towards Sylvie. “Have you found the target?”
The latter took a deep breath. “It has already charged up the slope at an extremely fast speed. I haven’t sensed any Eye Demons nearby for now, but I don’t think we have attracted its attention. But the defense line was struck by lightning, I’m afraid they no longer have the means to obstruct the Spider Demons any longer.”
That meant that the soldiers were almost in range of the Monstrous Beast’s stone needles.
But she was too occupied to take that into consideration.
According to Sylvie’s instructions, Andrea found the Magic Slayer’s figure through the aiming lens with much difficulty, but at the same time, her heart sank. Its speed was not only fast, it was so fast that it could be considered as flickering erratically! If one was just slightly slow to catch up, they would have lost its shadow. To seize the opportunity for a shot, they had to be extremely close. Otherwise, the enemy would still be able to avoid her bullets while in flight even if she used her ability.
The other thing that attracted Andrea’s attention was during the First Army’s battle, the completely armored Magic Slayer did not have any blue barrier around its body—this was not something that just speed alone could explain.
During this period of observation, the dark clouds did not dissipate. Gold light converged once more and descended down—
The enemy had unleashed the second God’s Will!
This verified Sylvie’s warning.
The Magic Sayer held an unfathomable magic power capacity.
There was no time to hesitate!
Andrea suppressed the doubts in her heart and shouted to Wendy, “We need to go down, just like how we ambushed Hackzord the other time. As long as we can narrow the gap, I can ensure that the enemy will have no chance of escaping!”
“How close?”
“As long as it’s not within the Magic Slayer’s reach, the closer the better!”
“That’s difficult…” Wendy sighed. “It wouldn’t be a problem if Her Highness Tilly is the pilot, but Miss Shavi is the one piloting now. Not only do I need to control the strength of the wind from multiple directions, I have to pay attention to the enemy, it’s really not an easy thing to do…”
“You’re saying it’s impossible?” Andrea’s heart trembled slightly.
“It’s not impossible, but it requires extreme concentration and an all-out effort—” Wendy closed her eyes, then spoke slowly, “Well, I guess even though I’m old, doing it once occasionally shouldn’t result in too much of an impact.”
Andrea was startled, then the corner of her lips curled upwards.
She recalled Lightning’s remark—everyone would think of Wendy as an amiable senior, but under that gentle and soft appearance was in fact, a firm and determined heart.
If not for that, she would never had used her precise power to break the God’s Stone of Retaliation in front of Cara and save Nightingale.
“Shavi, push down your control stick!” Andrea shouted, “We’re attacking!”