BOOM!

One of the lion demons at the very front, nearest to Trip, dropped his sword. A large hole went through its chest. A similar hole went through the throat of a leopard demon behind it. Both demons dropped to the ground, dead.

Wukong gave a quiet whistle as he looked upon his Mistress. He was quite impressed. After all, that was two kills with one shot!

Trip clicked her tongue, slightly disappointed. It was less effective than she had expected. The deep shrapnel cuts on her hand had reopened again. Earlier, those wounds had bled anew when she finally took the time to remove the few pieces of jagged metal still buried in them. Now, even though the bleeding was slowing down, she could feel that she had yet to regain full use of her hand. Especially at the level of performance she required for aiming.

It was regrettable, but it couldn’t be helped. She would simply go on, doing the absolute best she could with what she had. She adjusted the aim of the single-shot pistol, already glowing yellow, in her other unwounded hand.

BOOM!

This time, the difference was clear. The single shot took down three demons, the first sporting a gushing hole in its belly. The other two dropped before she could determine the location of their wounds, but it didn’t matter. They were down. It worked.

Trip began shooting in earnest, pausing only to drop the spent pistols into the cloth bags on each side, before picking up another pair of loaded pistols from the ready pile.

The booming of her pistols rang out in pairs, never hitting the same demon twice, even if some could still move in a lively manner despite having taken a grievous bullet wound. Usually, those were from shots made with her wounded hand. Still, she was fulfilling her main purpose of disabling as many demons as she could, as quickly as she could.

Eventually, she used up her entire stock of loaded pistols. The entire first half of the corridor was carpeted in dead, dying, or seriously wounded demons.

She grimaced in pain. That many enhanced shots in such a short time had taken a toll on her, giving her a splitting headache that pulsed outward from the center of her skull. Her forehead, temples, and eyes felt like they were being pounded. Squinting her eyes against the pain, she surveyed the remaining horde of demons still jamming up the rear half of the corridor, spilling out into the clear space beyond. It was clear as day, there were still a lot more demons alive than dead.

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Giving herself a tiny shrug, she lowered her head, immediately focusing on reloading the spent pistols. She was well aware that, if the demons decided to ignore the remaining bamboo stakes in their way to charge her position en masse, she’d be lucky if she managed to reload maybe two or three pairs of pistols before they reached her. But every shot counted, every demon eliminated was one less source of fatal danger to the other defending villagers, so she moved her hands as fast as she could.

Trip was so focused on her task of “Reload! Reload!” that she was completely oblivious to the reactions of those around her. Wukong was thinking how wise he was to rein in his urge to do battle and instead follow the command of his Mistress to “stay put until she told him otherwise”. The five village defenders behind her were frozen, for real this time, their eyes open wide. Bajie was drawing the conclusion that the safest place to be, in the whole wide world, was behind Trip.

Shi Hu and Scale-tooth stared at the battlefield in horror, too shocked to give any orders to the stunned and confused demons. What was this? Everyone knew it was hard to kill demons as strong as them with mere pistols! It was one thing to give them light wounds, but a pistol that could kill demons of their caliber with one shot? Impossible!

Most of the charging demons hadn’t even realised their comrades were being killed so efficiently, thinking that the enemy was trying to use normal pistols against them. Only when a comrade near them suddenly died, would those around the dead demon begin to think that maybe, just maybe, charging towards the grim-looking woman with the guns was not such a good idea.

Finally, Shi Hu snapped out simply being stupefied at more than a third of his battalion being killed off in mere moments. After clearing his throat a few times, he rallied himself enough to shout out “Regroup! To me! Leave no brother behind!”.

Scale-tooth was still on the ground, eyes closed, hands together. A dark red shield of force gradually formed over him. Instead of becoming a smooth globe or wall, the cloud of red particles solidified into a thick layer of dense overlapping scales that covered every inch of him, even his eyes. Once he was sure of his defences, he clambered to his feet to clap both hands on Shi Hu’s shoulder. Again with eyes closed, Scale-tooth worked to form the same shield of translucent red scales over Shi Hu.

Nodding to Scale-tooth in thanks, Shi Hu said “You really think we need your Scaled Force Armour this early in the battle?.”

Scale-tooth looked grim. “Since that woman’s pistols are so much stronger than normal ones, they could have a much longer range than usual too. She might even be able to shoot us where we stand, right here.”

“In that case, see to our defence. You know what to do if she really tries shooting at us here. I’ll come up with a plan of attack for our brothers.” said Shi Hu, clapping the returning members of the battalion on the shoulders and back as they passed by.

-- Chapter 39, End --