On the coastal island, the power of the thaumaturgically enhanced sniper rifle expressed itself with a grand cracking of the air. Near Evan, fauna and flora jumped in response, whether it be as a fight or flight response or from the vibration of air from the deafening sound.
A bullet made of ultra-hardened string was expelled from the chamber, entered the rifling, and vanished straight into a pitch-black space that could only be described as an ultra-precisely constructed Sixth Circle - Spatial Storage spell, such that it was tube tunnel of several hundred meters within a pocket dimension. This pure white bullet spun through the extended rifling, blitzing through the several mini magic circles within the dimensionally isolated rifling with zero resistance. Acceleration spells and layers upon layers of elemental spells cast its blessings upon the bullet.
When the bullet finally emerged from the other end, the world paused as if unwilling to defile the sacred bullet with the passage of time. The bright, glowing bullet tore through the air and struck a patrolman three kilometers away, on the other side of the island from the speedboat that contained Tyril and his sister. Instantly, the prowler, a high circle Lord, died without being able to put up any resistance with the entire top half of his head taken off.
Immediately, two of the three others around the prowler unhesitantly threw themselves prone while the last one flung himself to the cover of a tree. They were all elites with abundant training and were high circle Lords. With all four together, they were a force that could probably even defeat a low circle Sovereign in an ambush.
But despite their strength.
‘String Armory - Frangible Flower!’
From the corpse, like a blooming flower, a cobweb of the bullet that had fragmented into a dozen pieces upon impact exploded out, much like a grenade. But unlike a grenade, there was no explosion, no noise, and came with a rudimentary targeting system for the shrapnel of the bullet in the form of guiding strings.
The only noise that followed was the sound of the magical walkie-talkie falling out the hands of the man behind the tree, who had not had time to press the push to talk button on the walkie talkie.
None of the four had the time to even leave their final words, or even a final whisper.
"Sniper, sniper, sniper! Sniper spotted at grid coordinates Bravo-2-5-7!"
The sound of the rifle had echoed around the silent island by now and exposed his location, so Evan allowed the rifle to vanish, disassembling the rifle back into strings and wrapping them around his forearms and wrists. He then made a mad dash to another vantage point on the island, roughly a few hundred meters away.
After he had departed, as expected, patrolmen swarmed the location where he had fired the shot within less than ten seconds, and immediately established a temporary defensive position with a barrier around them to look for the sniper. They also confirmed that the target detected on their magical radar tool was certainly a hostile, likely the sniper. With this in mind, a small team was dispatched to flank and ambush the sniper.
"Team Gamma, move for a decap strike, Team Alpha will maintain low profile and man this post!"
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The distribution of their total forces was now four that were indifferent to Evan and neutralizing the traps in the warehouse, four in a defensive position with a barrier around them at the location where Evan had first fired his shot, four attempting to flank towards Evan who had moved to another vantage point, and two positioned beside Tyril and his sister to monitor them. Evan was able to see all of this because they made no effort to hide their movements, only that of the flanking team, but Evan had more than enough experience dealing with sniper counter offensives to know that the four who had snuck under the cover of the trees were coming to flank him.
This kept in mind, he had roughly half a minute before the flanking team would be upon him. For a professional like Evan, this was light work.
Another Frangible Flower fired with a deafening crack eliminated those in the defensive position, and when the four arrived at his location to flank him with radar in hand, they did not even see hair nor hide of Evan before just one string wrapped around their necks and snapped it.
Now, with no radar in hand and no communication through their walkie-talkies indicating what had happened to the rest after the announcement of a sniper, the strike team inside the warehouse and the two monitoring Tyril and his sister began to show anxiety.
The strike team withdrew and took up a defensive position beside the two who had been monitoring Tyril and his sister, now bringing them up to a group of six.
Tyril, bound and gagged, looked at the perspiring soldiers around him, unsure of how to act. He had been beaten up severely when he had tried to resist and was unbearably furious at the soldiers. But now, the shots and the behavior of the soldiers gave him a hint as to what was happening.
“Mhm. Mhmm, Mhmm!”
Evan the soldiers could tell that he was laughing through his gag.
One of them grabbed his hair and lifted him up while ripping his gag off forcefully.
“Fuck are you laughing about, brat?!”
“You-Euhk! You're all dead! Haha!”
Tyril’s voice that had come out was raspy, but the defiant sneer could not be hidden.
“Brat! How dare-!”
“Oy. Stop.”
The person who seemed to be the highest ranking officer here commanded the soldier who had been coughing Tyril to stop, and when Tyril was dropped face first into the sand of the shore, he got down to a squat and looked down at Tyril. Tyril turned his head sideways and stared back defiantly with one eye, a sight that annoyed the officer.
“So small and yet so much attitude. Listen here. You'll tell me everything you know. Who's picking us off? Your buddy Noah? That moron’s dying off to some dragon right now. So who is it?”
With a mouth full of sand, Tyril responded.
“Just like that time two years ago.”
“Two years ago? Back when those garbage four were heroes?”
“Just like back then. It's the angel.”
“Who? Stop these riddles, brat. Try more of these twisted answers and I'll really end you.”
Despite only half of his face being visible and the other half in the sand, Tyril's face clearly twisted back into a sneer, further pissing off the officer.
“Really asking for it, aren't you?! You know, now that I think about it, your sister's quite the beauty, isn't she? What if I were to taste-”
“No! You! You! Don't even think about it! I'll kill you! I'll really kill you!”
Despite Tyril's screams, the officer, who's eyes reflected an indescribable malice, extended his arm to her chest with a grin.
“I swear! I'll really-!”
Tyril’s screech was cut off with a gunshot, but he had blinked and missed it. Before his widened eyes, all six soldiers collapsed, the top halves of their heads missing.
A man appeared before him. Due to the time zone difference between Odir and this island, the sun was still setting here, and Tyril, who was still lying on his stomach on the sand with a bloodied face, watched as the man walked up to him with the sunset in the blood-red sky behind his head like a halo, only his chin barely visible from the shadow of the sun.
A smile could be faintly seen on it.
“Was I too late, Tyril? Let’s head back to the Demonic Forest as quickly as possible.”
As he said that, he cast the First Circle - Clean on his bloodied strings while retracting them into his wrist. Tyril was completely and utterly stunned, and a voice leaked out his inner thoughts against his will.
“...angel…”
When he said it this time though, he was not thinking of the angel of death.