Chapter 206: Chance

"DIE!" Hearing this shout from behind, I felt like cringing. While I could understand if some kind of newbie or amateur were to announce his sneak attack by shouting before but to witness an officer doing something like that?

Right at this very moment, my personal evaluation of the army of the northern republic fell apart. If they were recruiting such idiots for officers, what kind of skills their soldiers could present? If this one example was actually showcasing the general level of the entire army attacking, how could they even break through the perfectly fortified passes?

But there was no time to analyze the situation. Pushing my body to its limits, I threw myself at the prince in front. Not because I had any animosity or hostile intentions towards him, but simply because he just stood in the path I had to take to have the greatest chance of avoiding the attack.

Jump. As reckless as losing the connection between one's legs and the solid ground was in a fight, this kind of thing no longer applied to me. As soon as I managed to obtain a tiny bit of momentum, I used the phasing to escape several meters in the air, escaping from the effective range any sword or other cold weapon could have.

"Wait, are you…" It seemed that the prince finally managed to recognize me. But it didn't matter at this point. While I still was going to ask him several questions, now that one of the officers of the northern army proved to be completely untrustworthy, I wasn't going to take any chances.

"Using the sacred stone here would be too diabolical…" Muttering in a voice just loud enough for the people below to hear me, I smiled as I reached to one of the things that constantly weighed on my neck despite the fact I never used it so far.

A repetitive, short-range, barrel-fed shotgun. Loaded full with nine bird-shot types of shells, it made for a great weapon when dealing with tightly-packed crowds.

"Let me give you a taste of my metal." Announcing in a solemn tone befitting a true executioner, I made sure the safety was off before loosely aiming the barrel down.

So far, no one dared to make any other move against me. It seemed that the fact I managed to fly up caught them by surprise. In light of the recent events, I could even tell that some would soon start accusing me of being a winged warrior in hiding, deprived of his wings only to fool the wingless tribe. But it didn't matter now.

I pulled the trigger.

PWOSH!

As soon as the first round of fire exploded outwards from the end of my weapon's barrel, I was pushed up by several meters. It seemed that as great as flying was when firing at a dense crowd, it still has its drawbacks. Namely, nothing to soften up the recoil of the gun!

But that didn't change the fact that with just a single swing of the reloading mechanism, I prepared another shot… And then sent another flurry of small metal balls, each one capable of easily penetrating skin, inner tissue, and even bones at such close distance… And when fired almost directly downward.

Poof. Poof. Poof.

Three more shots cleared out a small area, leaving it with nothing more but crawling survivors of the onslaught. Just as expected, the birdshot was great at pacifying the crowds, but not as good when it came to actually kill enemies.

"Now that I think about it, wasn't this the greatest joke of the modern arms?"

It was something that always puzzled me. Back in school, I was taught that with the invention of modern weapons, they were designed to eliminate but not necessarily kill. And truthfully speaking, modern weapons achieved this task pretty well.

Back in times, when the hot weapons were still only starting to develop, getting shot… Most of the time meant either an instant or at least a pretty quick death. With the insane force that the bullet would have in the front-loaded type of guns, with how it would deform during flight and while penetrating its target, having one's hand, leg or entire stomach blown off wasn't that much of a rarity.

Compared to them, modern firearms aimed to disqualify an opponent from the battlefield. Not to kill him, no! That would make the problem just disappear. For modern warfare, it was better for the enemy to take care of his wounded, burden both his logistic at the front my transporting them around and back in their homeland by actually allowing them to heal… Not to speak of how big of a morale hit would a random citizen receive when seeing the state of their brave boys returning in tatters from the battle!

Poof, poof, poof. Three more shots sent around the cleared-out area gave the right hint to the soldiers remaining on the ground.

While those who witnessed the slaughter below my position were doing their very best to get as far as they could from this specific area, there were some braver or just ignorant officers who already prepared their archers unit to shoot me down.

Sadly, with just a single normal barrier stone remaining in my possession, I couldn't risk receiving many of those arrows. What was even worse, at the distance at which I could see the units of archers drawing the chords of their bows, my birdshot shells wouldn't do much damage at all. Rather than that, the entire shot was likely to wound several enemies that stood closer, without reaching any of the archers I wanted to shoot.

But that didn't leave me powerless.

Allowing the cylinder-loaded shotgun to once again hang on a strap from my neck, I reached out for the true arsenal of mine, one that I have yet to seriously start exploiting.

Filling my hand with at least five of Sander's stones, I quickly scanned their markings to assess their usage. Two water fountain stones, two everblaze, and one shatterquaqe. The names associated with the structure of each stone were nothing less but an outburst of creativity of either Sander or one of his disciples… But nevertheless, it still allowed me to quickly recall what they could be used for.

"With such set… I guess I will go with this!" Picking up the shatterquake stone, I pressed its activator before taking aim and throwing it towards the center of a circle I drew in my imagination between three nearby groups of archers. Before its effects could even come into play, both of the everblaze stones went flying towards two other groups of archers.

Only at that point did I decided to allow my body to fall down instead of artificially keeping it up by phasing upwards by a tiny bit whenever my upwards momentum was about to completely die off.

Then, as soon as my feet finally touched the ground, the stones started to come off.

At first, two huge explosions. Moving my eyes towards them, I could see a beautiful red flower blossoming high above everyone's head, only to suddenly break apart, spilling the liquid flames on everyone and everything around. In a flash, not only the several tens of men strong units of archers simply vaporized, but so did quite a lot of their fellow soldiers around.

Compared to the everlasting blaze stone, the shatterquake was far more humane. At first, a small blob roughly the diameter of a single meter appeared, consuming everything that was just unlucky enough to stand in its way. Sadly, I couldn't see this phenomenon with my very own eyes, but Sander's description of it instantly appeared in my mind.

Once the sphere would fill itself with the energy from the stone, it would reach a point when it would simply fall through the ground, consuming all the earth and stone on its way as it went further and further down.

But said sphere was far from being stable. After several seconds, when its inner forces finally lost the fight against the natural forces of the world, a huge magical explosion shook the ground. From deep below. Through the layers of earth, stones, and crust that it already sunk below.

In effect, the entire ground seemed to shake. As I was standing down, I got to experience this weird sensation first-hand.

While the ground below my legs was shaking, the only stable element in the area turned out to be the mountains themselves, simply too massive to be affected by a simple Sander's stone.

But it didn't matter.

Given how I was prepared for the shaking to come, I somehow managed to keep myself standing. But all around me, people were falling to their knees, rolling on the ground, falling from their horses who would break their legs in turn…

Just like the modern weapons, the shatterquaqe stone wasn't lethal. It didn't aim to kill. It simply aimed to disturb the enemy.

And in this disturbance, my chance to reach the prince finally appeared!