The instant she discerned the truth, Konehl-Ghervil heard a shout reverberate in her mind.
“Duck!”
Her actions synchronized perfectly with the urgent command.
With all her might, she tugged at Ishmele-Esli’s clothes, yanking them sideways to dodge.
The blood-stained longblade sliced through the air, grazing her scalp, tearing through Ishmele-Esli’s arm, and shattering a corner of the ice shield.
Without losing momentum, the blade brutally cleaved through the head of a guard in front, burying itself deep into the salty, crystalline earth.
Konehl-Ghervil had not anticipated such power from the blade, even after it had shattered the ice shield.
No ordinary person could wield such force.
Her abrupt, sweeping motion caused her to lose balance, sending her right side crashing to the ground.
Gritting her teeth, Ishmele-Esli quickly conjured ice to staunch the bleeding from her left arm.
She dropped into a half-crouch, her hands spread wide, summoning two larger ice shields to block both front and back.
Bang, bang, bang.
A flurry of gunshots immediately followed, impacting the fixed positions of the shields.
‘Larger means thinner,’ Konehl-Ghervil thought.
Cracks swiftly marred the surfaces of the shields.
“Your reflexes are truly sharp,” Ishmele-Esli remarked. “With that kind of force, if you hadn’t pulled me, the blade would have pierced more than just my arm.”
The angle of the incoming blade had been exceptionally cunning, targeting Konehl-Ghervil’s head and Ishmele-Esli’s heart simultaneously.
It had been meant as a single, fatal strike.
Konehl-Ghervil marveled at Ishmele-Esli’s persistent optimism.
Unlike Ishmele-Esli, Konehl-Ghervil possessed little combat experience, relying mostly on instinct.
“Do you have a plan?”
Curling her body to minimize her exposed area, she hoped to reduce the pressure on their defenses.
‘Don’t rush,’ a voice echoed in her mind. ‘The attackers from behind haven’t closed in yet.’
“Should we wait for them to run out of bullets?” came a suggestion from in front.
“Nobody’s that foolish!” Konehl-Ghervil retorted, though she wasn’t certain to whom she was speaking. “They’ll definitely hold back their bullets and keep their distance. How much longer can you last?”
‘Should I go cut them down?’
“What?”
‘I’ll cut them down!’
****
RUMBLE—
The ground trembled violently, and all gunfire from the front ceased abruptly, replaced by terrified human screams.
Before Konehl-Ghervil could comprehend what was happening, Ishmele-Esli vanished, charging with her shield towards the most dangerous threat: the guard captain at the rear.
Bang—
Bang—
The ice shield deflected every bullet until the fifth shot finally shattered it.
It was too late; Ishmele-Esli had successfully closed the distance.
“Damn it!”
Half-kneeling on a sloping incline, Theodore-Dubois’s face was contorted in terror.
A colossal axe of frost, filling his entire field of vision, arced downwards to strike.
Its speed rendered evasion impossible; he could only manage to raise his pistol horizontally to block.
For half a second, it held.
Then the pistol snapped in two, and his entire muscular right arm was violently severed.
“Ah!”
The man’s scream was gut-wrenching.
Clutching his wound with his left hand, his knees sank into the sandy earth.
“That’s for you,” Ishmele-Esli said, a hint of confusion in her tone. “Though I seem to have cut the wrong one…”
Ishmele-Esli raised her axe once more, aiming for his left arm.
“Wait!” Theodore-Dubois pleaded, his words cut short.
His facial skin rapidly swelled, obscuring his eyes.
Similar symptoms manifested across the rest of his body.
The relentless gush of blood from his right arm’s wound could not stem this alarming transformation.
Within seconds, his entire body ballooned to three times its original size.
Then, with a sickening pop, he exploded.
Blood splattered everywhere, and his scattered skin and bones dissolved within the crimson spray.
“Why is it always like this?”
Pushing aside her blood-stained shield, Ishmele-Esli looked momentarily bewildered.
She had only meant to scare him, never expecting him to simply explode.
It was a death remarkably similar to that of the two assassins before him.
Glancing at the shield in her hand, she saw it was riddled with dense cracks; a slight tremor would reduce it to fragments.
The force of the explosion had far exceeded that of mere bullets.
A pang of regret hit her; the blood-stained ice was now unusable.
Without further delay, she swiftly returned to the edge of the salt marsh to assess the situation.
At the edge of a crater, spanning half the size of the salt marsh, Konehl-Ghervil lay prone on a stable patch of ground, peering into the abyss.
Most of the individuals had fallen in, including all the guards.
The chasm plunged nearly fifty meters deep.
The interior of the pit was far more expansive than its collapsed opening, with numerous sections shrouded in impenetrable darkness.
The fallen guards met various gruesome ends: some perished from the fall, others impaled by molten rock columns.
A handful — precisely one individual — had survived by landing on a comrade’s corpse.
Their condition was dire, with all limbs broken and massive hemorrhaging.
“My apologies,” Ishmele-Esli said, her voice carrying a note of regret. “I couldn’t capture him alive. He died the same way as the previous attackers.”
Ishmele-Esli’s voice startled Konehl-Ghervil, causing her to scramble backward, terrified of slipping or tumbling into the depths by some other mishap.
In Konehl-Ghervil’s estimation, the guards who had fallen into the depression were victims of a curse of ill fortune, having harbored sufficient malice towards Ishmele-Esli.
Mr. Dowo-Hawk and another merchant on the opposite side had survived, their original positions closer to the center, though they had sustained only minor bullet wounds.
The least injured was Dr. Sali; a bullet had struck their calf, knocking them unconscious from the pain and inadvertently saving their life.
Ishmele-Esli had already provided them with a basic bandage.
“Do any of you have a rope? I’ll go down and bring him up,” Ishmele-Esli asked.
Ishmele-Esli stood at the crater’s edge, observing Dowo-Hawk, who was supported by a companion, his head wrapped in strips of cloth, his face contorted with fury.
Konehl-Ghervil, hearing this, held little hope.
The man was afflicted by the curse of ill fortune; even if rescued, he would likely succumb to another misfortune, most probably bleeding to death before help could arrive.
“The Goddess truly stands with us…” Dowo-Hawk rasped, his voice raw with pain. “Knight, these damned, treacherous wretches are not worth saving.”
Dowo-Hawk, his face twisted in agony, didn’t forget to spit into the pit.
“To do such a thing for a mere few beetles! And after I even agreed to raise their commission! They entirely deserved this fate!”
“I don’t believe their ill intentions stemmed solely from the beetles,” Ishmele-Esli stated her true thoughts.
“Then it must be resentment, because I didn’t allow enough time to search for their lost comrades…”
Dowo-Hawk realized his misstep and trailed off.
With anger clouding his judgment and no one to challenge him, he abandoned all pretense.
“What could I do? Rumors circulate near there of…”
“Monster! Help me, I don’t want to die!”
The cry from the bottom of the crater drew everyone to the edge, compelling them to look down.
The surviving guard’s eyes were wide with terror as he frantically looked around, continuously shuffling backward.
“Where did the other bodies go?”
Konehl-Ghervil noticed that the bloodstains remained on the ground, yet the corpses had vanished as if into thin air.
Less than five minutes had passed since their discussion began.
Over twenty bodies had disappeared without a trace.
A chilling sense of dread instantly permeated the air.
‘Do you know how chameleons hunt?’ Govet-Ghervil’s voice echoed in Konehl-Ghervil’s mind.
‘Their tongues are usually 1.5 to 2 times their body length.’
“It’s an adult Green Lizard Dragon!”
Dowo-Hawk let out a horrified shriek, collapsing onto his backside, then scrambled backward, dragged by his companions.
“Help me…”
The cries from the bottom of the pit abruptly ceased.
The guard was dragged into the darkness at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye.
‘You should be able to see it now.’
At Govet-Ghervil’s prompting, Konehl-Ghervil squinted, searching the gloom.
In a corner, a colossal, indistinct form gradually materialized, its color indiscernible.
It was roughly estimated to be twenty meters long, with two gigantic eyes rotating eerily like oversized gears, and a mouth slowly masticating.
Before she could discern more details, a tug on her collar pulled her away from the crater as Ishmele-Esli hoisted her back.
“Legend says adult Green Plains Lizards can reach tens of meters in size. There’s no guarantee that what’s above isn’t within its attack range.”
“Stop,” Konehl-Ghervil commanded.
Konehl-Ghervil extended a hand, signaling Ishmele-Esli to halt.
“It’s already had its fill.”