Chapter 17: Suffocation
[Edited by Arthur300000 and ArchmageNaoki]
[Don’t mind Deathbricks sneaking in again]
Everyone was still surprised by my actions when I walked in to see what’s inside. Inside I find strange black objects in the center. While I tried to understand what they were, they exploded. “BOOM!” An earth shattering explosion rang out originating from the center of the cave. It happened so fast that I couldn’t use my dragon shouts in time. The force and heat of the explosion broke through the [static wall] spell that was cast from my Wakizashi and hit me like a truck. The next thing I know there was pain all over my body and I was sliding down from a tree trunk 40 meters away from the entrance. My vision went blurry, and my ears were ringing. The world seemed spinning around me. I was disoriented, unable to tell up from down. The falling feeling made me grab whatever I could put my hands on.
A few seconds later I healed myself and tried to understand what the hell just happened. My vision and senses went back to normal after healing, but I could still hear my heart beating from the adrenaline rush. My teammates didn’t take the brunt of explosion force like I did as they were around the entrance when the explosion went off. However, they didn’t go unscathed either I noticed as I saw Sophia was unconscious, and both of my siblings were struggling to get up. My sister suffered the least. Maybe it’s because her dual axe’s static fields are stronger than mine.
“Kuro-chan!” The first thing I heard was my sister screaming. “I’m fine!” I quickly told her and used Aura Whisper「LAAS-YAH-NIR」to check for an ambush. No strangers life aura was detected so far. The range of this dragon shout detection is about 500 ft or 150 meters, so it means whoever planted that bomb inside the hideout hasn’t reached us yet.
“It’s an ambush, find cover!” My brother yelled after he got up and princess carried Sophia to the bush nearby. Well, if I didn't know better I would’ve thought he was a pervert who preys on an unconscious girl. My sister deliberates a bit, then hides herself. If I had to compare the sneaking ability of my teammates, my sister would win by a large margin. However, I'm still better than her. In a few seconds, I blended into the darkest shadows of the forest where those fireflies and fluorescence light from the glowing mushrooms doesn’t reach and waits for the attackers to come. However, after 30 seconds passed and Aura Whisper had worn off, no one had shown up yet.
After using dragon shouts, there's a cooldown period that made my throat so sore I couldn’t use a dragon shout anymore. I compared those moments duration to the in-game cooldown time, and it seemed to match. Thanks to my gaming habit, I always count down the cooldown time of each dragon shout. Thus, I could estimate how long its effectiveness will last and how long I had to wait until I can use the next shout. The Aura Whisper dragon shout has the active duration of 30 seconds and a cooldown time of 50 seconds. That means if I use it consecutively there is a 20 seconds gap I'd be unable to sense life aura. I use Aura Whisper again after the cooldown time was over. The good thing about this dragon shout is it’s not a loud shout, but it’s also not so quiet either so if I want to avoid detection, I shouldn't use it near anyone. The result of the second aura whisper is the same. Nothing was detected, but my heart was still beating so fast and loudly. I try to calm myself down and contemplate my options. We could just run for it, or I could summon a dragon named Durnehviir with dragon shout and brute force our way out. The former might put us at fatal risk if the stealth snipers are lying in wait for us out there while the latter may lead to troublesome problems later like initiating a national dragon hunt or something.
While I'm thinking, I caught some life signals on the edge of my detection, and it seems like Sophia regained her consciousness at the during this time. “There are 12 of people formed up into four groups of three scattering around the area looking for us. Thankfully, they haven't noticed us yet. I'll try to find out if there are more.” I report what I saw by the short-range communication device. I sneakily move closer to them, but I had to stop when I heard my brother talking. “Careful Kuro, I moved some of the traps while you were doing your ‘scouting’ thing.” Oh, he found the corpses I hid, huh? Well, it’s doesn’t matter anymore. I ask for the general locations of those new traps, but I’m still moving carefully.
*Boom!* Just when Aura whisper turned off, a spectacular explosion about 40 meters away from me caused a commotion among the bandits. “SHIT! The trap was move-” One of the bandit cursed but another loud *Boom!* blocked what he said and was followed by a torrent of curses and swear words from the bandits. To make matters worse for them, we began raining down spells on them.
“Sophia, bombard the area about 30 meters east from your last spell, a bandit is climbing that big blue tree” I coordinate our attacks as I was the only one that could sense the bandits' location clearly. Pristia also switched from close combat fighting to spell-slinging at them with something like a wand. The spells we shot at them weren't very effective against their interference fields because we had to originate the spell away from our location to cover our position. However, with the coordinated attacks, we drained their interference fields energy quickly, wreaking havoc and panic amongst their rank. Nevertheless, the range of Aura Whisper is too limited, and the sniper I killed yesterday was about 600 meters away so there could be one I couldn't see hiding somewhere. In the end, this shout wasn’t covering enough area to find those snipers that may lay hidden in wait. So until we discover their sniper's position, it’s imperative that we should hide ourselves well.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Those bandits also fought back by firing their spells randomly which I thought were harmless, though I was quickly proven wrong. I soon realized that the dark and dense forest that should provide my cover for easily sneaking around was set alight by those spells. So now I had to stay hidden without moving to avoid their detection and forsake the plan about pursuing their sniper. I also nicked a bandit in the head who came close to my hiding spot without anyone noticing.
“They’re trying to smoke us out! Kuro, where is the guy who’s firing those spells ?” My brother asked for the arsonist’s location. The shooting, screaming, swearing, and the explosion of traps made it impossible to sense the position of the guy firing the spell with only sound, so I had to use Aura Whisper again. The man who’s randomly firing his spells isn't far away from me, but he works with his lackeys really well. They blocked and shot down any spells we throw at them, so I ask my team to provide cover for me. Sophia strategically erected an earth wall to protect me from any possible snipers view. While my sister cast something like a smoke screen and my brother distracted them by shooting at them from opposite directions. It took me a few seconds to reach them from my position, and when I did, I chopped one of his lackeys head off. I pushed the corpse at my primary target to provide a further distraction while I approach him from a different angle.
*Slash* The plan worked perfectly until my sword struck half way through that man. It didn't feel like cutting flesh and bone. It felt like I slashed some kind of metallic structure. My sword was shattered to the hilt. My six-sense is warning me, so I used my momentum to roll away just in time. The explosion originated from the man I slashed knocked the last of his lackeys to the ground, so I finished him off with a piercing bullet. There was some powerful shot randomly firing from far away, so my suspicions about snipers were confirmed.
“What was with that metal skeleton?! A terminator?” I complained because I just lost my Wakizashi. However, my nerd brother answered while we're firing at the leftover bandits. “I don’t know what a terminator is, but if that explosion I heard was caused by you hitting something at the center of his body, then that guy has undergone full cybernetic implant” Ok, it’s bad to cut people in half, I will remember that.
“They're retreating!” The rest of the bandits still put up some fight, but in the end, there were only three bandits left which separately ran away to the edge of my detection- *Boom* -make that two. The fire that was rampaging in the forest was also extinguished by the melted snow that fell from the top of tree branches. The beautiful scenery around me was turned into a charred forest with embers and smoke flying everywhere. Some of the trees fell by the power of explosions and spells, allowing the warm sunlight from the sky to shine impossibly bright through the gap of those missing branches. I let those bandits go because without the almighty power of the save and load function. I couldn’t risk following them without my interference field. I don’t think I could dodge any spells without it.
“Just stay hidden a bit longer, the security team is heading our way. And I already told other groups to stay away from this area. ” Oh, I just realized that Vicky and Marcus's team might encounter those bandits. Good job brother. We wait for several minutes more until I heard the sound of intense fighting and explosions from far away. I sigh. Well, the cavalry has arrived. It seems we bit more than we can chew. Luckily, no one died or got severely injured. Thinking back, maybe those bandits noticed their friends had gone missing and put down that huge explosive trap in their hideout to ambush whoever would try to attack them. But thanks to their slow arrival and my brother’s paranoid attitude, we successfully counter-ambushed them.
It took a few more minutes until I saw a space shuttle thing hovering above us. It felt like the shuttle is generating some kind of pulse that covered the entire area, but it came intermittently. I think it’s about a pulse per two seconds. Is this some sort of scanning method? A blue haired girl is flying the shuttle, and she is staring at me for some reason. After the shuttle hovers above us for a while, it flies away.
“I am sorry everyone. I brought you guys to the bandit’s trap.” My brother apologized through the short-range communication device. “Well, it’s not your fault, though. We all agreed to do this.” I voiced my opinion and the two girls on my team also agreed.
All the tension and excitement made me mentally exhausted after the combat. I knew there was a lot of equipment for me to salvage out there but for now, I just want to lie down for a while. So, I holstered my gun then lay down to relax. Well, I don't want to walk around in the place that’s rigged with traps.
“Nothing unhealable. I’m around 60 meters north from your position near the giant mushroom.” I noticed my leather clothes were repairing itself slowly. So this is the auto-repair function of the fabric huh? This battle is my first time that I received some damage so watching my cloth repair itself over my skin is quite a strange experience to me. If I cut my cloth into two will I get two sets of clothes or is there a core in the clothes somewhere?
A few minutes later all my teammates came to pick me up after my clothes were fully repaired. When they saw me just lying down on the ground, they looked concerned. I try to get up, but my sister just hugged me tightly while my brother also tried to heal me a few times to make sure I was alright. Sophia who came last also jumped at me and hugged me for a while. They all said their thanks to me, but somehow I feel like these girls just used this occasion as an excuse to hug me instead. Oh well.
“Let’s loot ’em up.”