The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary

Chapter 359: From Ascending To Retreat (2)

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Proofreader: Xemul

The shaking from the landing felt quite long to Loren.

He was not sure how long he had actually been shaking, but after enduring it for a while, the shaking finally subsided, and he felt Lapis’s hand lightly tap him.

“It’s all right now, Loren. We’ve landed.”

Saying this, Lapis lowered Loren’s body to the ground. Loren, while releasing the arm that was wrapping around Lapis’ body, looked at her legs, which must have suffered a considerable shock, and saw the devastation they had sustained.

Lapis’ legs, which were prosthetics, were not in such a state that blood was flowing out or broken bones were popping out of it. However, the prosthetics, which until then had been no different from real legs, had been torn and shattered here and there, and strings and tubes of unknown purpose had sprung out of it.

“Taking on two people was a little too much, wasn’t it?”

Lapis said with a wry smile as she watched the liquid, sometimes clear, sometimes black, pour out from the cracks in her legs. The limbs that had lost their functionality couldn’t even stand, and Lapis, who was in a kneeling position, didn’t appear to be able to move from that spot on her own.

“You can’t walk with those…”

“Well, yes. But since both of us landed on the ground alive, I guess it was a necessary sacrifice.”

Laughing, Lapis said this. Some distance away on the other side, Gula landed with a loud bang.

Landing with a crack and a cloud of dust, Gula walked up to Loren and Lapis with light steps, as if no part of her body had been damaged when she landed, unlike Lapis. She looked surprised to see Lapis, who could neither stand nor walk properly.

“Lapis-chan?! How come I only looked away for a moment, and you got like this!”

“If they were flesh and blood, I could heal them, but… I don’t think this can be fixed.”

“I’ll carry you. Let’s get out of here.”

“It’ll be nice if it lets us go.”

Lapis said, and Loren turned his body in the direction she was looking.

There, he could see the structure that had blown up the royal castle slowly rising slightly from the ground, probably about to turn toward them.

The town that surrounded the castle had been smashed by the scattered fragments and the tremors that occurred when the fortress-like structure emerged from under it. As Loren felt a chill run down his spine at the fact that he could not see any of the inhabitants even though such devastation was unfolding, Gula pointed to the floating fortress and shouted.

“This thing is no good! It’s going to shoot at us!”

“What do you mean by ‘shoot’…?”

The structure looked like a combination of a fortress and a ship, with a number of cylindrical objects attached to it. Seeing several of those tubes moving toward them, Loren jumped back with a sense of foreboding, holding Lapis in his arms, who was unable to move.

At the same time, a roaring sound and puffs of smoke came from the end of the tubes, and the ground on which Loren’s group had been standing exploded with a huge roar.

Loren held Lapis’ head in his arms and kept his eyes fixed on the fortress as the onslaught of earth and sand and the impact pushed him to the ground. They were being tossed left and right like a ship in a stormy sea by the earth and sand that kept bouncing up without even having time to stand.

The force of the upheaval was intense, and Loren, enduring the pain from the pounding ground, tried to figure out what it was that was flying at them and how to escape from its range of attack, but couldn’t come up with a single thing.

“Gula! Are you still alive?!”

“Well, this much isn’t gonna kill me.”

“Do you have any way to get out of here?!”

In response to Loren’s question, Gula glanced toward the fortress and watched some of the tubes roar and spit smoke, squinting slightly as if to focus her attention. ℞ãΝ∅𝖇Ěș

In the next instant, however, the slightest amount of blood dripped out from the corner of her lips, and although it was not a direct hit, the impact of something hitting the ground caused Loren and Lapis to roll on the ground again.

“Not good, it’s playing tricks. It’s broken through my authority.”

“Were you attacked?! What the hell is going on?!”

[‘Onii-san, a metallic mass the size of your torso is coming at us.’]

Shayna said before Gula could answer, and Loren looked at the floating fortress at a considerable distance away in disbelief.

If Shayna’s description was correct, Loren believed that what was attacking them was some kind of projectile.

Loren had seen stone throwers several times during castle sieges, but he could not see anything like that anywhere in the fortress, at least from their current position.

“I don’t see anything flying at all.”

[‘It’s too fast for your eyes to catch.’]

“This is getting more and more troublesome… Anyway, let’s get out of here! There’s no way we can handle it!”

With Lapis unable to walk on her own, it was obvious that Loren and Gula, who had only the greatsword and magic as means of attack, would not be able to mount an effective counterattack against the fortress, which attacked them unilaterally from far away.

Knowing that if they just stood there, they would only be toyed with, Loren immediately called out to Gula and started running with Lapis in his arms, hoping to escape the attack. As if in anticipation, a number of glowing red balls were ejected from the fortress and flew over their heads.

“These are…”

“Oh my God, they are all fireballs.”

The fireballs were so numerous that one must wonder how many magicians would have been mobilized to launch them, if they had been launched by magicians. They flew past the team in an arch and landed at the same place. 

The resulting explosion erupted in a cloud of bright red flames, and the wreckage of houses and stores burst into flames, blocking the path of the team as they tried to flee.

Loren turned his back to the explosion to protect Lapis in his arms from the slamming impact and heat, and gritted his teeth when he felt the heat on the nape of his neck.

However, there was no way that Magna, who was probably in the fortress, could have missed them, who had stopped in their tracks.

The impact of the metallic mass that had apparently been shot into the vicinity again sent Loren into the blazing fire. Surrounded by flames and the hot air that threatened to burn his chest, he broke through the enclosure of overbearing flames and rolled on the ground without even taking a breath.

“This is no good! It’s relentless!”

Gula, who suffered the same fate but was sturdier than Loren, began to rant and rave about the inescapable situation, but Loren had no time or energy to respond to her and began to crawl on the ground to distance himself from the fortress.

He was hoping that the magic flames and the dust would hide him from view, but as if mocking his thoughts, Magna’s voice echoed from the fortress to the surrounding area.

“You look like an insect. That suits you.”

“It’s not your power, it’s that big fucker’s.”

Loren, who cursed at Magna despite knowing that the guy would not hear it, was once again sent rolling on the ground with Lapis in his arms by the impact of an offensive shot fired nearby as if to silence him.

“I remember now! That’s a mobile fortress, isn’t it? A conquering weapon of the ancient kingdom! So it was buried in a place like this?!”

Gula, who was blown away by each impact, perhaps because she weighed less than Loren, yelled out the identity of the thing Magna had dug up while pulling her body from the sediment she was half-buried in.

“Even us Evil Gods were in hot water because of it! With our current equipment, we won’t stand a chance!”

“Escaping is enough for me…”

The fortress’s attack radius was so large that it would be extremely difficult for them to escape from the area on foot.

Even so, if they did not escape, they would continue to be attacked unilaterally, and would eventually run out of strength. As Loren stood up with Lapis in his arms, Shayna’s warning echoed in the back of his mind.

[‘Onii-san! Direct hit incoming!’]

Shayna, was able to sense the attack incoming from the fortress.

Loren, having determined it was impossible to dodge an attack, which he could not even see, unsheathed the greatsword on his back, thrust the tip slightly into the ground, and crouched behind it with the flat of the sword serving as a shield.

At about the same time, a shock went through Loren’s entire body, so violent that he feared he would be shattered. All he could sense was the impact and the feeling that he had probably been blown away.

After a long floating sensation that left him wondering how far he’d been thrown, Loren hit the ground and rolled a long way, his arms and legs flung haphazardly in all directions as he was unable to even take a protective stance. When the momentum finally stopped, Lapis in his arms and the greatsword in his hand were both thrown out, and he landed in a heap on the ground.

Loren knew that he was alive because he was conscious, but he had lost all sensation in his body. He was in a state he had never felt before in his life, and he thought he might be mortally wounded as he weakly spat out the hot lump that was rising in his throat.

[‘Onii-san! Please hang on! Your wound…’]

Feeling Shayna’s scream cut off in the middle and realizing that he seemed to be in real danger, Loren tried to make out as much as he could of his surroundings when only being able to move his neck and eyes.

He couldn’t find Gula anywhere.

In the rising cloud of dust, Lapis, with whom he had been separated from halfway through, could be seen crawling towards him using only the strength of her arms.

Nearby, the greatsword that had apparently managed to prevent Loren from dying instantly was lying broken in various places. 

As Loren was impressed that he had survived an attack that left a Demon King’s weapon in such a state, Lapis threw herself at Loren and hugged him. Placing her hands on his chest, she gently shook him.

“Are you alive?! Loren, are you alive?!”

Loren tried to answer, but he could not speak, as if something was stuck in his throat. He could only hear a gurgling sound and felt a liquid, probably blood, spilling from the edge of his mouth. 

Seeing this, Lapis held Loren’s head and, without hesitation, pressed her lips against Loren’s, sucked up what was stuck in his throat and spat it out.

“Loren?!”

“The follow-up is… not coming. I guess he’s gloating before the final blow…”

If there was a means of attack that could accurately hit them, then the current situation, with both of them stuck in one place, should have been the perfect opportunity to strike.

Yet the fortress was watching over them without attacking.

Loren wondered if Magna was gloating at the fact that he could finish them off with just one more blow, but Lapis glanced towards the fortress and tilted her head slightly.

“No, that doesn’t seem to be the case?”

Magna’s relationship with them so far made it hard to believe that he would show them any mercy. 

Loren glanced frantically towards the fortress, thinking there was no reason not to attack, and saw the hovering construct shaking violently, its massive body tilting.

As he wondered what the hell was going on, smoke began to rise from all over the fortress, and he could see that the whole fortress seemed to be in some kind of trouble, even if the reason or cause was not known.

“We have to get out of here while we still can!”

“You can’t… run…”

Lapis’ legs were in no condition to walk. Gula was nowhere to be found, and Loren himself had just now been rendered unable to walk.

“If I had prepared properly, I could have used Return, but… Other spells won’t give us much distance.”

Lapis bit her lip, thinking that she should have done more to prepare for something like this. Still, if she didn’t do anything, their chance of survival wouldn’t be high; as she started to prepare some spells, she noticed Nig peeking out from under the breast of Loren’s jacket. 

Nig, who had apparently slipped inside the jacket at some point, moved a little sluggish, perhaps due to the attack on Loren. But even so, he dexterously used his front legs to present a coin to Lapis.

“This is… Hm, I think Loren got this from His Majesty the Great Demon King.”

Lapis, remembering its origin, took the coin from Nig and looked at it closely, and after a while realization dawned on her face.

“If it belongs to His Majesty the Great Demon King, then… the coordinates of his residence are set.’

Lapis, clutching the coin, glanced toward the fortress for a moment.

The fortress, whose flight had begun to flicker for some reason and whose attacks had ceased, was still trying to attack them. Tubes here and there began to slowly turn towards them, and it did not seem as if there was much time left before the attacks resumed.

“Let us pray that my guess is correct. Fly us through the door on high to his land, remembered in this item!“

After chanting the incantation and gripping the coin in her hand more firmly, Lapis shouted out the spell to be exercised as she put all her strength into the arms that were holding Loren.

“>!”

A dazzling light filled Loren’s slightly-opened eyes.

Without knowing what kind of magic it was, Loren felt the touch of the ground on his back disappear, and he let go of his consciousness, remembering only the feel of Lapis’ arms embracing him.

If you are wondering why this novel has ended, it is because the author got cancelled. Sad that it got cancelled when it was just getting good!

Damn it!

We’ve come so far already!

I would like for all of you to note that these chapters, at some point, are actually from the Light Novel. The Web Novel stopped long ago, and we continued with the Light Novel. There had not been anything that different though.

But, for now, the end has sadly come.

I would like to thank you all for your support. It’s sad to see you go, but without all of you, we would not have finished this novel.

Hope to see you in the next novel: Truth Weavers

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