Chapter 253 Volume IV - Chapter 98: The End of the Operation
I wrapped my fist in flames and sharp gusts of wind, wasting no time in lunging at the dwarf as my rifle slipped into my ring.
The dwarf noticed me, gritted his teeth despite the pain, and prepared to meet my attack, but again something unexpected happened. The dying arms of my pollinating clone gripped him tightly and held him in place. That momentary gap was enough to decide the winner of this fight.
My fist landed directly into the gap in his armor, the opening in his chest. The hot flames burned his skin even more, and the sharp winds only made his wound worse.
The dwarf's eyes twitched, unable to bear the immense pain any longer, and as he stood there he lost consciousness. My clone vanished into thin air as his body collapsed to the ground.
Gasping for breath, but knowing that to stay where I was would be tantamount to death, I quickly surveyed my surroundings and saw the other dwarves surrounding me, all ready to pounce on me and unload the bullets from their weapons. The soldiers had already caught up with me.
I clicked my tongue. Our fight with the dwarf hadn't even lasted a minute, but they were already all around me.
If I wanted to get out of here, I had no choice but to use my artifact, even if I didn't want to. So, pouring mana into my charm, I used the last bits of my mana to create several layers of barrier around me to protect me from the bullets that rained down on me as my body faded. The bullets landed on my barrier one after the other, shattering them as if they were nothing.
Just as the cloaking process was finished, a system notification appeared in front of me, though I didn't even check what it was. Even though I was completely out of sight, the attacks continued and I had to be fast. I didn't have a single second to waste.
I managed to find a gap, somehow slip out of the way, and with only scraps of my mana left, with no idea how long I could maintain invisibility, I kept moving toward the rendezvous point.
*******
When I finally approached the meeting point, the thing I feared happened.
The cracks on the charm on my chest suddenly widened even more. As I quickly tried to deactivate it, the flow of mana I had been pouring into it was suddenly interrupted.
The charm emitted a small amount of light around it, and then particles that looked like blue-colored dust, indicating that the rune it contained had been destroyed, disappeared into the atmosphere through these cracks. The charm split in half and fell from me to the ground.
I couldn't help twitching my face and staring at it as my invisibility was broken.
Invisibility... it was one of the greatest blessings available in this world. And I wasn't sure if I would ever find an artifact as effective as that charm again in my lifetime, but now... the artifact was gone.
I clicked my tongue and kept moving forward, even though my invisibility was broken. My loss was great, but I couldn't stop.
Finally, only a few minutes after my charm was broken, I emerged into what appeared to be a clearing. Three dwarves, Gurdas, Rulhan, and Durvan, were waiting for me in the center of the clearing. They were all panting, yet when they saw me their eyes widened, their faces filled with a momentary look of concern.
It was understandable. After all, I was covered in blood, my clothes were torn. They weren't in the best condition either, Durvan was limping as if he couldn't step on his left foot, but at least we were here; we were alive.
"Aiden! Hurry up!"
Gurdas shouted in a huff, the worry on his face this time coming from another thought: the enemy soldiers approaching us.
I ran to them without waiting for a second. I would have preferred to be together and have someone to lean on than to stand here.
As soon as I was with them, I turned directly to Rulhan, as he was sort of our leader in the operation.
"What's the situation?"
"Reinforcements wil-"
His words were interrupted when he momentarily tilted his head to the side. Simultaneously, a line passed through the spot where his head had just stopped and lodged in one of the trees behind us. It was a bullet.
Countless soldiers entered the clearing from all directions as this happened, kneeling with their weapons pointed at us, ready to react at any moment.
I couldn't help squinting my eyes as the soldiers were still coming, one after the other, with new weapons pointed at us.
However, I was looking somewhere, in the direction of an old dwarf among the soldiers with his hands behind his back.
His graying hair showed his age, and his body was too thin for a soldier. Yet there was a certain authority about him, he was clearly of high rank. His dark brown hair and ocean-blue eyes, together with his sharp gaze, added to the authoritative air he exuded.
Behind the old dwarf came several more armored dwarves. Together with him, there were seven of them, each as strong as us, if not more.
"Did you really think you could escape?"
The old dwarf looked at us with disgust, his ocean-blue eyes staring at each of us, clearly showing that he was a little bit angry. The soldiers behind him remained silent.
"How sad... Your operation failed because of the youngest of you all, Aiden Tenebra, who ain't even a dwarf, and now you're surrounded, about to be captured. What a shame, ain't it?"
"I feel like you're slandering me, come on..."
I spoke mockingly. As if ignoring my wounds and my mana, of which I had almost no shreds left. I wasn't even wearing armor. A single command from the old dwarf and I would die a painful and sudden death in a hail of bullets.
I didn't care, though, and that must have made the old dwarf even more angry, for his brow furrowed.
"Aiden Tenebra... you're quite the famous one. I thought what I heard about you was exaggerated, but your arrogance is just as they say it is."
"Ah, yes, it's true that I'm famous, but... what makes you think I'm arrogant? Shame on you."
"I suppose you don't care what happens to you when you are captured again?"
The dwarf was confident. We were cornered, there were only four of us wounded, and there was literally an entire army surrounding us. To him, my behavior right now was just nonsense, a way to buy time so that I could escape.
And it was. I really wanted to buy time by talking to him. Because the moment he orders his troops to attack, we're all dead.
I opened my mouth again, I had decided what I was going to say next, but in the meantime I saw Rulhan distracted for a moment, his body relaxing for no apparent reason.
I threw away all the scenarios I had thought of in my mind and smiled as the weight lifted from my shoulders.
"Oh, no... You seem to have misunderstood the situation."
The old dwarf's brow furrowed even more when he saw the smile on my face. I continued nonchalantly.
"Who said I would be captured?"
I raised my finger and pointed to the sky behind the old dwarf.
The dwarf stared at my finger for a moment. Not even a second later, his eyes widened and he reflexively turned quickly in the direction I pointed.
As he did so, a brilliant light illuminated the entire forest and the sky, as if a new sun had risen over the world. The light was immediately followed by a shockwave and the accompanying noise, the ground shook violently.
The shockwave was so violent that even the kneeling soldiers were thrown off balance and thrown backward. It was not just dust or soldiers that were swept away by the shockwave, even trees with weak roots were thrown up into the air. Even the strongest men on the field, the old dwarf and the six behind him, had to throw themselves to the ground to avoid damage.
It was as if an atomic bomb had exploded, as if a meteor had fallen. A huge mushroom cloud was rising into the sky where a new sun had just risen, where the enemy base we had been in not long before had been.
The eyes of the old dwarf, who had already secured himself on the ground, widened even more furiously when he saw this mushroom cloud.
"A- Attack! Fas-"
Still reeling from the blast, he suddenly froze. He couldn't believe what he was seeing, his authoritative air of a few seconds before had been replaced by that of an idiot.
In the clearing where we had been standing, just four of us, we were now surrounded by dozens of soldiers in North Holar uniforms. Each of the enemy soldiers was being neutralized by the soldiers who had appeared out of nowhere before they had even recovered from the explosion.
Even armored enemies didn't stand a chance. The North had sent almost twenty high-ranking soldiers to the area as if to show that they were perfectly prepared for the situation. This was what the old dwarf saw.
"You said the operation failed because of me, didn't you...?"
I widened my smile as I made sure he heard my voice.
"You might want to reconsider that."
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