Chapter 99: Shelling and Resistance
Once Eve loaded another shell, I aimed at the Dragon King who was not Ryu and pulled the trigger.
It hit.
The bombardment from a modern weapon seemed to be dealing a fair amount of damage. The Dragon King looked around irritably, attempting to determine our firing position.
While she searched, Eve loaded another shell. I aimed and pulled the trigger again.
“Ahaha! This hits her almost comically easily!”
“You are not merely trigger-happy. You are a trigger-happy man capable of repeatedly striking a small target several kilometers away. That is frightening.”
Raphiel complained, but I was desperately trying to save Ryu.
For some reason, pulling the trigger made me laugh.
Even the Dragon King would not simply endure our attacks forever.
She grew wary of our fire, moved away from Ryu, and began taking evasive action at tremendous speed.
“Surely even you cannot hit her now, Eight?”
“Saintess-chan, that’s what we call raising a flag.”
I aimed vaguely and pulled the trigger.
“Oh, it hit!”
“Eight, are you not excessively skilled at leading a moving target?”
“Well, I pulled the trigger when I felt it might hit there, and it did.”
The Dragon King scowled as our attacks continued striking her. She spread her wings wide and shouted.
“Monsters! Destroy that thing on land!”
She issued her order.
An eerie light radiated from her wings and enveloped the monsters, making their bodies grow noticeably larger.
They had clearly become more powerful.
Ryu’s “Eye” had possessed enough power to destroy a Leviathan in an instant, so the other Dragon King’s “Wings” must have granted a special ability as well.
I expected the empowered monsters to obey her, but…
“Tch. Why will they not move as I desire?”
Instead of following her order, the monsters merely shifted nervously without moving.
Were they afraid of the machine guns?
The Dragon King lost patience and applied greater pressure.
“If you disobey my order, I shall reduce you to ash with my breath this time.”
“—!”
The flash, explosion, and impact that preceded the monsters’ attack had almost certainly been a threat directed at them.
This time was different.
The Dragon King’s voice conveyed her determination to tolerate not a single disobedient creature.
The monster horde understood. Ignoring the Royal Knights and adventurers, they charged toward us and the trailer from which we were firing.
“Eight, continue the bombardment. Eve, continue loading.”
“Hey, Saintess-chan. I’m getting bored with this.”
“Then I shall give you the ‘White Magician Girl’ I happened to pull from the pack I opened recently.”
“Yahoo! Let’s go, Onii-san!”
White Magician Girl…
If I remembered correctly, it was a rare card from the card game Raphiel and Eve had become obsessed with.
“Are you sure? Weren’t you making a huge fuss over how rare it was?”
“My deck-destruction lock-control deck has no need for it. You should play with us sometime, Eight.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it, Onii-san. Saintess-chan used that deck against beginners like Luka and Dragon King-chan, and they refused to speak to her for three days. That’s how brutal it is.”
I did not understand the game, but I understood that Raphiel showed no mercy even to beginners.
“—Miracle of Sanctuary.”
“Gya! Wait, Saintess-chan!”
“Oh, my apologies.”
“You definitely did that on purpose!”
Raphiel’s miracle formed a barrier that purified any monster entering it.
Eve was the Demon King and therefore a kind of monster, so it affected her normally.
In any case, Raphiel’s barrier prevented the monsters from carelessly approaching us.
“Heave-ho, Shoichi,” Raphiel said, delivering the ancient yokkoisho pun as she lowered herself into the machine-gun seat and placed her finger on the trigger.
The next instant, a storm of bullets erupted.
“GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!?”
As though mocking the monsters unable to enter the barrier, Raphiel gunned them down.
Their annihilation was over in moments.
The irritated Dragon King clicked her tongue and flew toward us.
“Tch. Very well. I shall personally put an end to you.”
Tension ran through us.
Raphiel and Eve together had only fought evenly with the Ryu who possessed the “Fang” alone.
The Dragon King now held four parts—the “Scales,” “Wings,” “Tail,” and “Eye.” Even those two could not fight her without suffering grave harm.
I continued firing in a panic, but she showed no sign of falling.
“I have found you, fools who defied me. Consider it an honor to die by my hand—Hm?”
“…?”
The Dragon King suddenly stopped moving.
Her entire body seemed to twitch, as though something caused her to hesitate before attacking us.
What was happening?
“…Can the ‘Eye’ be resisting me? Someone the other me considers close, someone she does not wish to attack… I see. It makes no difference.”
The Dragon King clenched her fist again.
Just before she attacked, however, she stopped a second time.
This time, it was as though someone had called out to her.
“…What is it? I am in the middle of something.”
She spoke into empty space.
Raphiel quietly murmured, “Miracle of Eavesdropping.”
The next instant, an unfamiliar man’s voice echoed in my mind.
The Dragon King was apparently speaking to someone through magic, and we could hear their conversation.
“Dragon King, the ‘Eye’ you absorbed appears to be rejecting you!”
“It remains within manageable bounds.”
“But if you kill those people in your present state, the memories and emotions within the ‘Eye’ may awaken through hatred and rage and seize control from within!”
“You are telling me not to punish the fools who interfered with me?”
“Yes! Absorbing the ‘Fang’ would also be difficult while you remain unstable. You must first prioritize making the ‘Eye’ completely part of your body! Please understand!”
“…Tch. Very well. I shall heed your counsel.”
The Dragon King abandoned her attack, rose into the sky, and looked down upon us.
Then she made a declaration.
“My name is Dratea. I am the ruler of Zahaba, the god worshiped by the Dragon King Cult, and the true Dragon King. I look forward to meeting you again.”
With those words, the Dragon King Dratea vanished beyond the sea.
The monsters fighting the Royal Knights and adventurers retreated with her. Apparently, casualties remained minimal, but…
We had not repelled her.
It would be more accurate to say that a fortunate series of coincidences had allowed us to survive.
For now, we asked the Knights to launch a ship so we could retrieve Ryu, who was likely drifting somewhere on the sea.