5
Battles had abruptly begun breaking out all along the mountain ridge. There was no telling where they’d sprung from, but monsters like Eternal Moths and Moon Rabbits appeared from rainbow light and began to invade. Most of their opponents were monsters; it had turned into a fight between them and the Wise Wolves that made their home on Mount Lang Jun.
At the foot of the mountain, a group of Adventurers was also clashing with monsters cloaked in rainbow light. If Chun Lu had been there, they might have known that it was the guard guild she belonged to, the Lelang Wolf Cavalry, but Leonardo had only looked down from the pass, and he hadn’t been able to make out that much.
All he knew was that the mountain range had abruptly gotten noisy and dangerous.
Ironically, the uproar showed Leonardo and Coppélia which road they should take. After all, the center, where the commotion was greatest, probably held some sort of clue about this incident, and it was likely that Kanami was there as well.
Coppélia and Leonardo advanced across the mountain’s surface, following the uproar.
Leonardo had managed to keep from saying, Kanami’s screwed up again. Let’s hurry up and get over there, which he felt showed that he’d developed some self-control. That said, it was doubtful whether he’d needed to be that considerate with Coppélia: She’d responded to the remark he actually uttered with “Coppélia agrees that Master’s chances of survival are good.”
At any rate, the two of them headed farther and farther up the rocky mountain, where landslides had broken out here and there, avoiding battle as they went and driving back enemies when they absolutely had to.
They found the open space because fireworks just like the ones on the East River were going up from it. These fireworks, which were a familiar sight for locals, were a regular Independence Day feature hosted by Macy’s (which Leonardo had never frequented due to his desire for candy bars). Although, to Leonardo—who thought proper engineers went up to the roof of the office (of course they wouldn’t be working!) to drink beer and barbecue as they watched the parade stream by without a break—Independence Day was no more than this regular event.
Well, what had actually gone up had been spheres of electricity, not fireworks, and the flashy racket hadn’t come from a parade of high school cheerleaders, but from Kanami.
Guided by the sound of combat, Leonardo and Coppélia jumped down into the open space through the hole left by the collapse, then froze as they saw how bad the situation really was.
Leonardo had just been thinking about idle summer afternoons on Independence Day, and the shock was twice as great for him as it would have been for a normal person, but he admitted he’d brought it on himself and gave up. It was fine to shoot off a series of large-scale annihilation attacks in lieu of fireworks, right? You could probably say they were filling in for celebratory cannon salutes and laugh it off. Fighting an enormous magical beast instead of having a parade was pretty much like a NY Mets game. Leonardo was a fan of the team, and when he could get a ticket, he’d often spent Independence Day at the ballpark.
When you were traveling with Kanami, he thought noise on this level was one of those things that could happen. It was a nasty thing to think, but, well, it could probably happen.
However, even so, this was supposed to be a raid-class monster? What was up with that? Kanami and a wolf monster were fighting it alone.
Apparently, she was getting her hooks into animal familiars now, too. On top of that, Kanami and Elias were lashing out at each other with swords and fists, and he didn’t know what it meant. He felt like he was in a dream.
“What the hell are you doing?!”
“Ah! Croakanardo! Perfect timing, are you okay?”
“We’re fine. I dunno what ‘perfect timing’ is supposed to mean. Explain all this. Go ahead and pass out documents if you want.”
“I’m busy right now.”
“Yeah, I can see that, but Elias is—”
They weren’t allowed to have a leisurely question-and-answer session. Elias, whose eyes were cloudy, had charged, holding his great sword like a spear. Kanami and Leonardo split up to avoid him, dodging left and right. Elias ran between them, crashing into the wall of the limestone cave, sending up a cloud of mist and scattering rubble around.
Of course, this didn’t render him unable to fight. He appeared from the standing mist of scattered water droplets, stoop-shouldered and dragging his crystal sword so that it scraped along the stone.
“What’s going on?!”
“I don’t know, either. It was probably some kind of wacky evil beam—”
Are you a kid?!
But he didn’t manage to make the retort.
Elias had leapt in as suddenly as if he were spring-loaded and had slammed countless daggerlike lumps of ice into Leonardo.
The Ancient probably thought he wouldn’t be able to completely capture his opponent, an Assassin who fought with twin katanas, by swinging around his enormous two-handed sword. He’d chosen the right attack. Leonardo wasn’t about to let himself get taken out for free, though. He shoved his two fire-attribute katanas, the fantasy-class Ninja Twin Flames, into the ice storm, attempting to cancel it out with the force of the flames and hot air.
“Your pulse and coloring are abnormal, Lord Elias. Do you wish to be heal—?”
However, even in that moment, Coppélia was Coppélia.
Tilting her head in an attentive gesture, she approached Elias fearlessly. The elf probably had some sort of status abnormality, and she was attempting to heal it.
Stepping out of the field Leonardo’s weapons created, Coppélia took a direct hit from the shockwave the two combatants’ clash had generated. Hastily, Leonardo swung his weapons sideways, but they didn’t reach far enough to protect the slight girl.
That said, although Coppélia appeared to be wearing a maid outfit, she was equipped with plate armor, and her defensive abilities were far beyond Leonardo’s, who’d sunk most of his points into agility. The fragments of ice and stone missiles just bounced off her with light metallic clangs.
The hand she’d extended was knocked away.
With a ferocious growl and eyes that seemed to be pained by something, Elias had refused it.
Coppélia persisted, reaching out to save him again, and Leonardo pulled her into his arms and leapt sideways.
An enormous guillotine of ice bore down behind them. It was an unreserved certain-kill attack that ignored things like efficiency and hit rate. With a savage scream, Elias unleashed the sort of huge attack he normally wouldn’t even have selected.
Holding the petite girl in his arms, Leonardo looked into her eyes.
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