Chapter 87 - The Witch of Ice and Snow
After Alcedo injected himself with the green liquid-filled syringe, his magic power increased immediately.
He got on all fours, like a real beast, and his fangs grew, dripping with saliva.
“GraaaAaaAA!”
“!?”
I pointed the AK47 at him and went full auto!
However, he carried his body just like a real beast and quickly dodged.
I replaced the magazine―and he used that opening to shrink the distance between us.
Alcedo’s leap kicked up the dirt and grass got behind him. His sharp claw left a shallow cut on my throat.
BANG!
That was the 7.62x51mmNATO round, a cover shot from Chrisse.
However, Alcedo performed an evasive maneuver and took some distance.
Looked like, even with Chrisse’ skill, it was still hard to get a direct hit on him.
With my magazine replaced, I continued to aim for him, but the bullets just wouldn’t hit. They did grazed him, but the wounds would just heal up instantly, due to his increased magic power.
Thanks to the AK47 and Chrisse’ cover, we succeeded in not letting Alcedo approach.
Still, our ammo is limited.
We can’t keep him at bay forever.
(At time like this, if Lyss was here she could supply us with her infinite storage!)
She underestimated her own spirit’s blessing, but if you asked me, it was the most wonderful power.
To be able to carry around supplies without regard to their weight, it was like a dream power for the army.
If she felt like it, she could carry all the guns she wanted and become something like an ‘one man army’.
While I was thinking about something useless like that, I heard Snow’s voice from behind.
“Dance! Blizzard! Ice javelin! Let everything freeze over! Storm Edge!”
It was ice x wind intermediate magic.
Snow’s small scaled tornado was spinning around in mid-air, and countless number of sharp blade of ice were dancing inside of that. A countless number of blades started shooting toward Alcedo, like they were shot from a machine gun.
That was the duo performance of wind and ice.
With her speciality, ice type magic, she targeted an area instead of a point.
TL note: like the explanation in AIKI, she attacked like a shotgun, rather than a sniper rifle
“GraaaAaAA!”
Alcedo howled a warcry as he dodge, dodge, dodged!
Thanks to the defense formation, enhanced eyesight, and physical ability, he dodged the ice blades continuously. Still, as expected, even he couldn’t get out of it unscathed.
A number of blades had stabbed his shoulders, arms, legs.
A part of the grass plain looked like a pincushion, but he managed to make it so that all the blades missed his vital spots and only pierced him shallowly. I could only say that his evasion ability was absurd.
“Lute-kun! Chrisse-chan! Buy me a little bit of time!”
“Eh!? Ah, got, got it!”
However, Snow didn't worry about him evading her ‘Storm Edge’, and gave Chrisse and me instructions. She concentrated on Alcedo and started releasing an unusual amount of mana from inside her body.
I didn't know what she was trying to do, but my dear wife was telling me to ‘buy time’.
Then, responding to that was a man's duty, right!
"Eat this!"
I took the attacking ‘concussive grenade’ in hand, pulled the pin with my teeth, and threw it.
The concussive grenade was a hand grenade that dealt damage by using the shock waves from the explosion.
Power-wise, it had an equally high power in an empty area without cover, but considering its average kill radius of 10 meters, it was small when compared to the fragmentation grenades.
This was so that the thrower could use it even in a place without cover (and not get rolled up themselves).
I chose the concussive grenade because this was an open plain without cover.
As I threw the grenade, I stepped back with body-strengthening-assisted legs.
A few seconds later, the grenade exploded and Alcedo was caught in the blast.
"GrRRaaAAaaAAAAAAaAH!"
It was his first time seeing a hand grenade, but since he knew about the AK-47, he immediately made a defense barrier, reducing damage to a minimum.
Taking this as a chance, Chrisse fired! I heard a series of overlapping gunshot sounds.
The bullets were stopped by the barrier — however, it didn't stop there.
The first bullet bounced, the second cracked the barrier, and the third broke through it, lodging deeply in his shoulder.
TL Note : was that a fucking chain strike?! With a fucking Bolt Action Rifle?! - rei_hunter
Chrisse fired three shots consecutively, hitting the exact same spot of the defense barrier.
I spontaneously doubted my eyes.
In the previous world, there was a rifle shooting competition called ‘benchrest shooting’.
It was a sport where people competed on how accurately they could shoot a target 100m away, on the level of millimeters.
TL note: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thKBF0QYE6k
In benchrest shooting, they didn’t carry the rifle and shoot like normal rifle shooting. Instead, they rested it on a table, or “bench” and shot.
Thanks to that they made the gun impractically heavy, to absorb the shock. They attached a high magnification scope, and even the cartridge wasn’t store bought; they used their own handmade cartridge, assembled with their own gunpowder amount, case, bullets, and reloaded by hand.
In this competition, one hole shot―the holes made by the bullets piercing the target connect into one single hole, was the norm.
However, Chrisse pulled it off in actual battle.
In the competition, the target didn’t move, was 100m away, used an impractically heavy gun and such, and only with those conditions could they pull off the one hole shot.
Yet, Chrisse did it on a moving target at more than 100m away, three shots in a row without pause.
It couldn’t be helped that I doubted my own eyes.
“GraAaaAaAA! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill yoooooooooooooooooou!!!”
Alcedo screamed like he had gone mad, he charged in while still spraying blood.
The wounds caused by Snow a while ago weren’t healing, maybe his increased magic power was running low?
Somehow, I felt that Alcedo’s movements were getting dull.
He charged in a ghastly manner, but it no longer had the same sharpness it did at the start.
I easily dodged, and shot the AK47 into him.
The bullets hit his legs and he fell, rolling on the grassland.
“Sh, shit…...I haven’t been able to move my body well for a while now. And why is it so cold.”
Alcedo breathed roughly, like he was feeling cold.
His body was shaking, his complexion had gotten worse, and his lips started turning purple.
It was like he had been tossed into the south pole without clothes.
“Phew, looks like it finally worked.”
“Snow, is this your doing?”
“That’s right, I stole his ‘body heat’ with magic.”
Snow was like ‘ehem’ and puffed up her splendid chest.
According to her explanation―she could steal the body heat of an enemy she had wounded with her magic, it seemed.
The wounded enemy would gradually lose body heat, and by the time they realized it, they would already be shaking like they had been tossed out into a blizzard naked.
What a heinous ability.
So that was why Snow got the second name of ‘the witch of ice and snow’.
“As expected of a A- rank magician. Was that something you learned while training under the master called ‘the freezing witch’ ?”
“U-un, it’s not. This is just something like a bonus, master taught me something even more amazing.”
Even more amazing than this…...I couldn’t imagine it.
“Not yet! I’m not done yet!”
As Alcedo yelled, he took out a new syringe.
This time he didn’t inject, but tossed it into his mouth and crunched it to drink the contents.
“Hyahyahyahya!!! I’ll kill you! I’ll definitely kill all of you!”
However, his wish didn’t become true.
After he drank the content of the syringe, his body suddenly swelled up here and there.
“Gugaaa!? AaaaA!!!”
Just like a balloon that was being pumped with air until it was about to burst.
After a certain point, Alcedo’s body bursted, scattering blood everywhere, just like a fountain.
“GYAaaaAAaaa!!--------------------”
The area was covered with the thick smell of blood, making it was stuffy.
With just a glance, one could understand that Alcedo was already dead.
He was a guy I wished to take revenge on, but in the end, he destroyed himself.
Snow and Chrisse, approached me while still being cautious.
“......This man, why did he die at the end, I wonder?”
“Just a hypothesis, the syringe―that drug, he probably overdosed.”
If you kept using an abnormal drug to increase your magic power, then it wasn’t strange for something to happen.
I walked to Alcedo and picked up the broken syringe.
Man in black.
Syringe.
Magic increasing drug.
Due to the many things that happened in a short amount of time, I wasn’t able to put my thoughts together.
Just, I sensed a chill, like there was a sinister shadow that gently brushed against my back.
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