Chapter 421: First Encounter
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Baiyi had only realized his mistake after allowing the Hitman to leave—why did his brain stop working at that very moment enough for him to agree to the Hitman’s volunteering? Fine, so the dude had changed into a suit that could blend with their surroundings, but he was still the Hitman. That changed nothing at all!
The others said nothing after he left, because some conclusions could be made without ever saying it out loud with others. The Blacksmith, for his part, already scouted a mound tall enough for him to set up his heavy machine gun; The Lich was already fine-tuning his recently green-ified Saint Quartz Staff; the Scholar had produced heaps and heaps of scrolls from her own storage pouch as she muttered to herself on which to use and for what and when; And finally, Lady a.s.sa.s.sin stood and… grinned like an idiot at Baiyi.
My question to you will forever be this: is there literally any other thing you could do other than grinning like an idiot and acting cute? Baiyi thought to himself.
They did not even have to wait for long before the group saw what they had been expecting: the Hitman Walker had triumphantly returned—with a stampede of undead galloping behind him.
“That one moment of weakness when I agreed to his proposition would always be a mystery to me, huh?” Baiyi said to himself and smiled mirthlessly as the big, black Book of Servitude appeared in midair.
“Get out of there and don’t do anything, we’ll handle this!” The Blacksmith hollered, standing next to Baiyi. “Your attacks are so loud and strong in aura, you’re only going to attract more of them!” ( .c om )
“I wholeheartedly second that. We will handle these foul miscreants,” The Scholar added eagerly. She seemed to have finally gotten over her little choice overload, since she had decided on a few scrolls that were now clutched in her one hand while her other hand gripped onto a magical staff normally used for teaching.
Wait a second. You guys are just excited to flex your powers as a warm-up after all these years of peace, Baiyi realized. Seeing that it was only but hundreds of undead chasing the Hitman, the Book of Servitude faded into thin air as he decided that it was fine for him to just let his coworkers had fun.
Honestly, only these monsters would see a six-versus-hundreds battle as a hearty warm-up.
The first of them who started—literally— firing into the undead was the Blacksmith, whose magical machine gun started bombarding them from a distance of about one thousand and one hundred miles away, exhausting its cartridge within seconds as yellow cases littered into a pile around the gun, eliciting its cheerful metallic “Tink! Tink!”. From the looks of it, this fake magical gun actually simulated the actual Earth counterpart pretty well, right down to the way its bullets worked!
As the machine gun sputtered, its projectiles—the Blacksmith had even taken pains to make sure his projectiles looked exactly like gun bullets—swept across the field with no s.p.a.ces in between them, pelting quite a dozen of Revenants charging at the front line to look like hornet nests before they crumbled into pieces completely.
“Uh-huh! Now this is what real men find romantic! Oh, how s.e.xy a gun becomes when it destroys these enemies with its decisive swoop… I knew it, my true love are the weapons from Earth!” the Blacksmith declared, his face beaming with joy as he loaded new rounds into the gun’s firing chamber.
Yea, as if there are machine guns on Earth that could fire at its target from what, about one thousand meters away? I mean, if you’re going to pretend to be using a machine gun, why don’t you go all the way with it? Baiyi snarked quietly in his head, picking up one of the rounds from the floor and compared it with one of the unfired rounds.
He quickly discovered that instead of actual gunpowder, these bullet sh.e.l.ls were filled with Mana Crystal shards to power up the magical formation concealed within that pseudo-machine gun when they were rapidly fed into the gun. As the mana contained in these small shards was minimal, their content finished almost the instance they were fed into the gun, rapidly rendering these rounds into empty sh.e.l.ls that were then scattered into a pile around the gun.
No wonder the Blacksmith had volunteered himself as the head of waste management regarding broken-off Mana Crystal shards created on the academy’s daily operations. He had turned all of them into bullets for his magical guns, did he not? Plus, judging from the standardized size of these sh.e.l.ls, Baiyi believed that they were probably ground into that size through human labor—which meant that the Blacksmith had probably used arm strength training as an excuse to fool all of his students into becoming his bullet-manufacturing labor workers…
The Blacksmith, in his trademark obliviousness, suddenly spoke, “Oh hey, Sir Hope? If you’re bored standing there and watching us fight, can you help collect these scattered bullet sh.e.l.ls? I mean, I had managed to complete a primitive stamping machine that can be used for ma.s.s manufacturing pretty soon, but I still felt like it was a waste to not reuse these handmade sh.e.l.ls that we’d put so much of our time and effort on…”
Do you really not see the extent of your preposterousness? You could have avoidedall of this time-wasting work if you just stick to normal weaponry! What is even the point of going extra length and pains for these unnecessarily specific things with limited applicability, huh? You’re putting way too much money into your cosplay as a gunman from Earth, man! Honestly, do the weaponry in Earth really seem thiss.e.xy to you?! Baiyi’s mind sprung into a long tirade as he stared at this uber-professional cosplayer before him. Next to him, Lady a.s.sa.s.sin’s appearance-s.h.i.+fting cosplaying from before suddenly seemed very casual…
Seeing his coworker having the first few kills finally made the Hitman Walker’s killing intent snapped. Discarding Baiyi’s advice for discreetness and control, the Hitman suddenly made a complete 180 turn in mid-run and raised his big, blood-hungry axes and started charging into the undead as if he was playing aMusou game 1 . Undeniably, his inflicted way more damage than the Blacksmith’s cosplay props; For example, during the brief timeframe when the Blacksmith had to reload his gun, the Hitman had already left droves of cut down undead in his wake…
“Have any of you no discretion? You have impaired the opportunity for my spell to be performed!” The Scholar grumbled sourly. She had spent quite some time chanting a pretty long yet incredibly powerful large-scale magical strike-down that would have annihilate the horde of undead in a single strike, but now that the Hitman had already sunken deep into the sea of enemies, carrying her spell out would also hurt her own teammate. Hence, the only thing she could do was to botch the destructive spell she had so eagerly wanted to unleash in frustration and resigned to delivering powerful magical shots at individual revenants and skeletal behemoths. ( .c om )
” All of you would need to exercise that discretion! I want to collect samples, and I appreciate if none of you damage them,” The Lich hissed under its breath. With the green Saint Quartz Staff in his hand glowing brightly in an unnerving green hue, it managed to forcefully taken control over a single Revenant, a skeletal mammoth, and a few skeletal knights or whatever, directing this small band to quietly slip away from the attacking army, approaching towards Baiyi and the rest through a roundabout route.
Since his teammates were flexing and warming up, Baiyi had pretty much nothing to do, so he looked up and watched the sky. Oh, right… He was not the only one free from the action. Lady a.s.sa.s.sin was still grinning at him like an idiot.
How pleased with herself is this chick over here? Baiyi snarked internally as he watched the cloud-filled sky. Plus, can’t she just smile like a normal person does instead of doing that idiotic grin on her face? Or… Maybe, this is her normal smile.
“—Hold up, is this cloud actually moving?” He muttered, watching a single black cloud approaching closer to them from above. He extended his finger and pointed out, “There’s no wind over here, so why is that puff of cloud moving?”
Baiyi extended his psychic energy into the cloud for a while before he froze for a millisecond, startled. Quickly, he turned to his teammates and urged, “Finish them up ASAP. Something really annoying is coming towards us.”
As it turned out, that single black cloud was not a cloud at all; It was a large herd of skeletal dragons, with other kinds of airborne undead creatures in the s.p.a.ces between them. They were so jampacked together that they actually looked like a tenebrous cloud large enough to loom over an average city.
Honestly, it would not be too difficult a task to actually counter them, but itwould most definitely cost them their time to investigate on the abnormal clash with the Laws of s.p.a.ce; In fact, it was becoming apparent that fighting these endlessly-sp.a.w.ning undead was starting to become a waste of their time in general, so perhaps the team would do better avoiding to fight with them at the moment.
Hearing the command from their leader, the Voidwalkers held nothing back and completely destroyed their enemies with startling efficiency. The Lich showed itself to be the most pivotal in their quick victory, as it was able to take forceful control over a huge number of the undead and compelled them to tear themselves apart—it was the most inconspicuous and least effortful attack the team could deliver.
The most terrifying enemy to a sea of undead was not any G.o.d-fearing men from the Church. It was a lich who had achieved DemiG.o.d rank—a lich who had the power to control them completely.
As per suggested by the Lich, the Voidwalkers climbed onto the back of the skeletal mammoth before retreating to a distance. When the black cloud of airborne enemies had finally arrived at where they were, the team had already vanished without a trace through Lady a.s.sa.s.sin’s sneaking technique.
One of the skeletal dragons branched off from the its fleet and landed slowly. Then, the rider on its back—a skeleton with an abnormally unique design—suddenly dissembled itself on its own impatiently, turning itself into a burst of scattering bones. It was as if the rider had killed itself out of impatience.
Then, on the ground, the piling bones forcefully torn apart by the Voidwalkers’ bombardment suddenly moved on their own accord, rea.s.sembling themselves automatically until a brand-new skeleton was formed. Then, the surplus bones piled on top of each other systematically to form a crown, an armor, and a long sword constructed entirely from unnervingly white bones. [1]
The skeleton with the crown t.i.tled its head back and forth as if flexing its neck, making popping sounds as the discs between the bones ground each other. Then, abruptly, two orbs of green flames lit up on two of its hollow sockets.
It looked down on the debris it was surrounded with and moved its jaw. It looked as if it was trying to say something, but there was no voice.
It took a while for the skeleton to extend its hand into its mouth and readjusted its hyoid bone 2 before it finally managed to say, “Fled.” [2]
A malicious voice answered it from behind, “My, my. Galthran, have you not changed you habit of taking new bodies whenever you please? It looks ill on you, O King, to change bodies like a parasite.”
The skeleton turned to the source of the voice. There, a small part of the air warped and twisted before a gigantic phantom with a torn-out and torn-up appearance suddenly surfaced. Its protruding claws—longer than even its own body—waved dandily in the air as the phantom continued to mock, “But more glaringly, you lost them. Pity, pity you. The Grandruler surely will not treat this mishap lightly.”
The skeleton with the crown on its head glared at its companion, the green flames in its eyes darting furiously for a while before finally replying, “At least I’m much cleaner than you, Charnal. Now tell me, O’ King of Phantoms, is snooping around the only thing you can contribute?”
“Hmph! The Grandruler values me for my skill!” The phantom countered hotly. “enough with these useless ramblings. While your stupid army of bones sluggishly tried to keep up, my phantoms had already tailed the invaders in secret. Now, all that is left to do is to reap their lives.”
The skeleton looked around the aftermath of the battle and sneered. “And you’re going to do that despite being no different from the air around us? It’s obvious that our enemies, who had survived this initial onslaught, are not the kinds you and your ilk can hope to match. Tell me where they are.”
“Ha ha ha. Us phantoms may be useless against bones like yourself, but they are terrifying nightmares to the living. My subjects have surrounded them, and all they are waiting for is my presence,” The ma.s.sive size Phantom King reb.u.t.ted with confidence and vanished completely into the air, as if it had grown annoyed with the Skeleton King.
It reappeared once more in the air where two wraiths—the Phantom King’s subjects whom had been dispatched to track their enemies—were hovering. Yet, the Phantom King was greeted with a large empty wasteland and a horde of its own phantoms, with not a single trace of the enemy in sight.