Chapter 268: 141. A Protective Shield -2 (Part Two)
Translated by A Passing Wanderer
Edited by RED
I pressed my hand on her head and drove my divinity into her body, but there was no effect. A simple healing magic spell wasn’t going to cut it anymore. What I needed here was Resurrection.
Meaning, I only had five minutes or so left. Beyond that, I wouldn’t be able to revive her. Not only that, the damage to her physical body was quite extensive, too.
I heard thunderous footsteps behind me. Mist Calf was striding closer.
‘I can’t concentrate like this.’
Resurrection was not a skill I could easily use even if I had a huge divinity reserve. I was trying to bring a life back, so I needed a correspondingly high level of concentration to pull it off. Also, enough time was critical, too.
At the bare minimum, I need something to stop Mist Calf for a little while…!
“Protect His Highness-!”
Something broke through the dense curtains of rising dust.
A huge ballista bolt used during siege battles flew in and pierced straight into Mist Calf’s hardened skin of stone.
-What is the meaning of…?- The giant sounded flustered again.
“Provide support fire!”
“Pepper that thing with siege weapons!”
“Archer battalions, fire at will!”
Countless projectiles fired from various siege weapons flew in. A large boulder slammed into Mist Calf’s face, while the ballista bolts continued to stab into the giant’s chest.
I stared at that sight, before lowering my head to see Ronia’s convicts rushing closer to the mud giant within the dust fog.
They had used various siege weapons to restrict Mist Calf’s movements. As for those regular soldiers without the large calibre weapons, they got closer to the mud giant on foot and deliberately yelled out loudly to distract it.
“You stinking giant bastard!”
“Who the hell do you think you are?!”
They fired their arrows and even threw their spears at it, but their projectiles were harmlessly deflected away by its hard stone skin.
They were acting as bait. In order to draw the giant’s attention away, they were even willing to risk their lives.
“Bloody hell, I’ve never been someone this brave, you know?!” Shuppel cried out before throwing his spear at the giant.
“…Stepping into a battlefield is already an act of bravery,” Harman nearby replied to him before firing an arrow.
Every time more projectiles hit Mist Calf, the giant furrowed its brow and angrily swung its hand about. Dozens of humans were sent flying in the air.
“Your Highness!” Count Jenald rushed to my side on his horse. “Please hurry and escape from here!”
I looked at him and shook my head.
These people were trying to do the impossible. They were swept up in the madness of the moment, only to throw their lives away.
To this mud giant, humans were nothing more than some ants.
“No, Your Highness. We are not just mere ants.” Count Jenald looked down at me from his horse.
Did he read my mind or something? Or was it because of Alice’s resonance affecting everyone here?
“At the very least, we should be like fire ants to that giant, my lord!” Even though his life was clearly in danger, Jenald had a gentle smile on his face.
**
Mist Calf roared out monstrously and stumbled back.
As a giant, the amount of pain it felt from the attacks of these puny humans would have been not even worth mentioning, yet…
-Y-you monsters!-
Mist Calf was actually shuddering from fear right now. On the other hand, Ronia’s convict army wasn’t scared in the least.
The giant had been suppressed by the raucous roars and fighting spirit of the convicts.
“It’s exactly as the ancient records say.” Hans travelling among the Ronian army muttered out and made a hopeful expression. “The cowardly Mist Calf!”
He recalled the stories from the ancient records. Although a king of the giants had created this creature a long, long time ago, it was always seen as a failure.
It certainly did possess a far greater strength than other giants, but…
“However, the mud giant was created with a heart of a mare, according to the ancient legends.”
The myths spoke of how, during the construction of the mud giant, a mistake was made and the heart of a giant mare found in the titan realm was unintentionally used as the creature’s heart. It made the creature surprisingly timid and a coward.
It seemed that legend was actually true.
“Compared to how large it is, it’s just an easily-scared giant, that’s all!”
Ronia’s convicts roared out loudly, and the frightened Mist Calf flailed its arms about. Whenever that happened, the convicts retreated to create some distance and gradually lured the mud giant away.
“Over here, you bastard!”
The cavalry raised lit torches and waved them around fiercely, drawing Mist Calf’s attention to them.
With that, safety for their Lord Saint had been secured.
Allen got down on one knee and slammed the staff down on the ground. He then flipped open the pages of Amon’s grimoire.
He was planning to initiate the Resurrection skill. Also, he needed to find the quickest, surest way to defeat that mud giant.
Summoning either, or both, the Skeleton King and the Bone Dragon would surely do the job, but it’d take too long to summon them.
‘Although I haven’t done this before…’
Allen was about to use the same skill that the former version of Nasus the Lich resorted to back in Aslan in order to overwhelm him.
‘The Grim Reaper transformation.’
Nasus sacrificed the lives of one thousand slaves in the Black Order’s headquarters to gather enough demonic energy. But right now, Allen possessed more than enough divinity to pull this transformation off by himself.
‘Also, I gotta restrict that thing.’
He might not be able to perfectly confine that creature, but it should at least be sufficient enough to stop the giant from moving anymore!
He was planning to overlap all three skills and activate them at the same time.
Allen’s bone armour-covered hand gently wrapped Charlotte’s head. “Charlotte, this is my first command to you,” he directly commanded her.
“You must come back to me alive.”
The twelve bone hands coming out of his back like six pairs of wings gently enveloped her next.
[Aztal Rune has been activated.]
[Ability transfer has been used.]
[Skill, Resurrection, has been initiated.]
[Skill, Grim Reaper Transformation, has been initiated.]
**
It was inside the deepest darkness imaginable. Only the still silence and nothing else existed in this space.
Charlotte was silently floating in this place, all alone.
Her body gradually felt heavier.
Death. It was coming for her.
The deep darkness acted like a swamp, and her body was sinking deeper and deeper into it. The more she sank, the fainter her memories became.
‘Just what was I doing until now…?’
{Charlotte.}
A voice suddenly came to her.
It was so very familiar to her. A voice she missed so much!…
{You must come back to me alive.}
Charlotte flinched at that.
Someone grabbed her hand and began pulling at her, as if to forcibly drag her away from the darkness of death.
She cautiously cracked open her eyes. Her eyes took in the sight of her current surroundings.
She was still inside the deep darkness.
Yet, there was bright light above her, up there in the ‘sky’. Everything below her was filled with that same inky darkness.
It was like she was inside the depths of an ocean.
Charlotte looked at her own hand. Someone was definitely pulling her away from here.
That someone was…
‘…Your Highness?’
It was Allen.
She tried to move her body and match that sensation of being pulled away. However, something else suddenly reached out to her from the depths of this dark ocean.
Those things were the hands of countless dead spirits. Those things reached out and grabbed her feet.
She flailed about with her legs. The frustration of being unable to breathe quickly overtook her.
{Charlotte.}
The voice was getting further away. Her body was sinking even lower, about to get buried within this darkness below.
‘Let me go!’
Charlotte kicked at the hands grabbing onto her feet.
{Charlotte!}
She could only grit her teeth. Right at that very moment, the Aztal Rune was engraved onto her face.
The bright golden light gushing out from the Runes drove the dead spirits away, and they released their grip on her. They tried to shield themselves from the light with their hands and retreated back into the darkness.
Charlotte kicked at the darkness and swam towards the light above.
His Highness told her this.
He told her to come back to him alive.
‘That’s why… I’ll live on!’
She grit her teeth, then reached out with her hand for that bright light.
**
‘How dare these mere insects…?!’
Mist Calf continued to stumble around.
Its chest was aching for a while now. Something deep within itself was writhing away uncomfortably. Rage had almost completely taken over the mud giant’s mind. It inwardly swore that it would not take all these beatings lying down without doing something about them.
Mist Calf grasped its hands together tightly.
It got ready to deploy the same attack that it had used to bring down the ice castle earlier. That should be more than enough to kill off the majority of humans here!
-All of you lot…!- Mist Calf grinned viciously at the humans below. -It’s time to die!-
But, just as it tried to slam its fists down, chains radiating with a golden light suddenly shot out from seemingly everywhere.
They wound around Mist Calf’s arms tightly and completely prevented it from moving.
-…?!-
The battlefield suddenly became deathly quiet.
The convict soldiers roaring out loudly, and even Mist Calf howling out monstrously in fear, all clamped their mouths shut in shock.
Their gazes immediately shifted to another location.
The twelve wings wrapped around Allen spread open wide to reveal another person in there.
She was a Paladin.
Her platinum-silver hair, glistening like pure-white snow, flowed down all around her like a white robe.
On her left hand was a huge shield, while in her right was a greatsword made purely out of divinity.
As she radiated pure-white particles of light, her eyes slowly reopened to the world.
< 141. A Protective Shield -2 (Part One and Two) > Fin.
