The whistling of the wind past Evan's ears decreased in pitch as he decelerated below the speed of sound. Deeming his current speed to be an appropriate cruising velocity, he rapidly constructed a hang glider by manipulating strings then hardening said strings with the rune of hardening Mia had engraved. Below him, a small island with a large warehouse in the center of the island rapidly came into view. Despite the picturesque view of the idyllic island below him under the blood-red sky, he could not help but click his tongue at what he saw.

‘Island’s fully surrounded. A perimeter’s been secured, and I’m fairly sure that was a small strike team of mages and warriors that just went in. There's no doubt about it. They’re professionals. This approach is unmistakable. Considering the way Noah found out about this, I suppose Tyril must have been captured as well, but I’m not sure where he is. Also, why is the sky red? Whatever. Not my concern at the moment.’

‘Island’s fully surrounded. A perimeter’s been secured, and I’m fairly sure that was a small strike team of mages and warriors that just went in. There's no doubt about it. They’re professionals. This approach is unmistakable. Considering the way Noah found out about this, I suppose Tyril must have been captured as well, but I’m not sure where he is.’

Evan pulled his hang glider upwards to slow his flight and flew in lazy circles around the island as he thought.

‘Given my high altitude, I’m confident in not being seen, but I can’t be sure. They almost certainly have some sort of anti-air protection or information system, too. A radar magic tool, maybe? It’s best if I don't glide around for too long.’

With that thought, he found a location of relatively higher altitude and sharply turned his glider downward into the bushes. He cut off the mana supply to the rune of lengthening, causing the strings to vanish as if they never existed. Wasting no time, the moment he landed on the ground after slightly slowing his fall with the trees to avoid making a loud noise on impact, he sprinted to a small hill, basically a large mound with forestry on it with a clear view of the entire island, and threw himself prone.

Evan peeked out over the side of the mound, near the top of it, where he was able to more or less obtain a full view of the roughly five kilometers of width of the island, with the warehouse in the center being roughly half a kilometer in width. The warehouse had no windows, and Evan was completely unable to see the inside of it. However, it was not the strike team that had gone inside that was Evan’s priority at the moment.

Evan knew that the strike team would find evidence of orc shaman traps that Noah had laid and would thoroughly sweep the warehouse to eliminate them. He kept in mind that the looting teams would only come after the strike force was done with this, so worrying about the team inside could be pushed to a lower priority. His higher priority at the moment was ensuring that they did not use Tyril as a hostage, and it was necessary to prevent their detection of him to prevent such a scenario.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

So far, it had been less than five seconds since Evan had landed on site. At this point, he knew that the person manning the radar magic tool was likely to have spotted his presence by reading his mana signature. Thanks to mana concealment, a few currently prowling the perimeter would need to move to his position to distinguish whether he was just a monster that had appeared or a genuine threat.

It would take roughly a minute for them to do so. In that window, he would need to make his move.

Evan's mind raced as he calculated his next steps. He had to act quickly and decisively to maintain the element of surprise and ensure Tyril's safety.

‘String Armory - Sniper: Barret M82!’

Evan, the former child soldier, had displayed exceptional talent in war and as a sniper at that. He was a talent among talents.

In just one winter, one hundred and eighty-two trained soldiers had fallen before his scope at the age of thirteen. Like any other soldier, he had disassembled his rifle and put it together more times than he brushed his teeth, and over the years, the structure of the rifle had been seared into his brain. With the rune of hardening, he had been able to replicate the sniper rifle he was most familiar with with the strings that were absolutely loyal to his orders.

Now, he was a superhuman in a fantasy world, and almost six years had passed since then. WIth age came wisdom, and with his status as a superhuman came ultimate strength, supreme vision and better craftsmanship. Thanks to these gifts, as a sniper, matters relating to recoil, scope, muzzle flash, reloading and immobility were now issues of the past. Though, the explosive sound of the sniper’s gunshots could not be removed.

As his hands rubbed against the matte off-white rifle with a rough texture due to the strings that made it up, a sense of nostalgia began rising up within him, as well as an overwhelming sense of despair and fear. Images of people he had eaten dinner with littering the ground as corpses flashed through his mind, a smell of feces, urine and blood on the battlefield, commonly referred to as the smell of death, assaulted his nose, and his face was drenched with perspiration. The sniper rifle that had already been positioned before his eye began to tremble and his vision began blurring.

PTSD. Post-traumatic Traumatic disorder. He had thought he had overcome it, but placed in an uncomfortably familiar position, his body betrayed him.

It was when he began his descent into a full-blown panic attack that his trembling scope vaguely caught the figure of a tied-up and gagged short figure bleeding out of several wounds all over his body next to a similarly bound and gagged clearly sickly young woman, arriving on shore in a speedboat with a small group of soldiers.

At the sight of the person he was here to protect, a girl with short brown hair and doe eyes wearing a radiant smile appeared in his mind, and Evan’s symptoms were blown away into the wind.

Reminded of what he was fighting for, he let his consciousness gradually dissipate.

It was just him, his rifle, and his target now.

Evan breathed out, and his finger squeezed the trigger.

The deafening gunshot of the sniper rifle that echoed throughout the island and the sound of the birds sent into a frenzy, marked the return of the angel of death to the battlefield.