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Chapter 18: The Massacre Princess’ Homecoming (6)

  Had Shuguang been conscious, she would have demanded why her brother never provided covering fire. Ming Xuan's answer would have been devastatingly simple: he couldn't provide it.

  Things had proceeded swimmingly at first. Ming Xuan's initial arrow disrupted the approaching party, and his second had bought precious time to reinforce Shuguang's position before her defeat. His feet, touching the ground, emanated waves of Aura through the terrain; the returning stochastic echo painted a precise map of everything within a kilometer radius. This combination of Aura-enhanced archery and seismic echolocation had made Ming Xuan the Yulong Empire's most precise weapon on the continent.

  But this left him with one critical weakness: his sense worked only on what was pnted on the ground.

  Such was how a kamikaze drone managed to fall from the sky and smash into his camp’s fortification, disturbing his bance. Erected wooden fences burned and ruptured with the crackling sound of timber. Men panicked, but soon gathered their shields, and mustered into a cohesive defensive shell. Smoke choked the air and sounds of burning vegetation created an obscuring bitter veil that the Third Prince's senses struggled to pierce.

  Then he witnessed something that defied belief.

  A man emerged from the hill's shadow, standing on a ft metal tray vast and strong enough to carry his weight. His carrier was held aloft by dozens of flying drones. Steely hair tousled against the wind's speed and determination as he aimed a slender armament of polymer charged with energy.

  Ciel, the Lord of Union, fired upon the encamped formation, single-handedly blowing their footing apart with his Ether rifle.

  "No. Freaking. Way," Ming Xuan gulped. He knew what had been done to catch him by surprise: his opponent had circumvented his seismic-based perception by inventing a flying sledge.

  He regathered his bearing in an instant. This battle had regressed from artillery bombardment into a cssical duel. The distance of a kilometer and dropping marked their battleground. His mission was clear: snipe—

  Another kamikaze drone dropped on his position, interrupting Ming Xuan's train of thought. It forced him to make a mental correction: Ciel could still bombard him while aiming the rifle. He, through gritted teeth, had to admit he now faced a great disadvantage. But, for the men still rallying bravely behind him, he refused to give in.

  And those men responded with vigorous determination.

  "Build a shield roof and wall," his trusted soldiers called out. "We shall defend the Third Prince with our lives!"

  "You guys—"

  "Sir," one of the men spoke, joining his fellow comrades in creating a human shield. "You are the greatest range champion in the history of Yulong. We will not allow anyone to steal that title from you."

  Eyes shining with bravery, the soldiers became a living shield of Aura around Ming Xuan. Three angled their imperially studded square shields upward to build a bck turtle roof, covering their lord like an umbrel. Four more knelt on each side, channeling their prayers into the shields to wall his fnks.

  Ming Xuan blinked at the protective warmth of his men, and he sharpened his resolve for the sake of their honor. Three arrows nocked with determination, he drew and loosed the projectiles with all his pride.

  Ciel responded with two furious pulls of his trigger. Pulses of Ether intercepted two arrows, causing them to erupt in an explosion. For the third, a quick maneuver of his drones allowed him to evade the shot, wherein it sundered the earth behind him with the volume of a bulldozer.

  More drones fell from the sky, but the men held firm, even as explosions reduced their shields to fractured ceramic and wood. Fmes and shrapnel caused them to bleed, but they did not bend. They moved with the practiced grace of a well-assembled machine, substituting the broken roof shields with barricades from the fnk.

  Ming Xuan, taken by the sight, used the pressure of his men's expectations to redouble his attack. He nocked five arrows and pulled them with determination flowing through his veins, letting them loose with an eagle's eye.

  Ciel countered this challenge by pulling out a disposable grenade: a time-activated aria that could generate attraction and repulsion force. He threw it at the screeching missiles of death, where it detonated in a blue light cdding a bck cosmic hole which sucked the air with the sound of vacuum. The five arrows spiraled out of control, hitting each other in a massive explosion and causing the soil to blow upward in a brownish dust cloud.

  The Lord of Union burst past the haze of dirt like a rampaging bull. This time Ming Xuan greeted the beast with rapid-fire arrows, trading power and quantity for firing speed.

  He fired without stopping, arms blurring like shell casings ejecting from a gatling gun. Arrow after arrow pocked the ndscape with holes like a carpet chewed by dogs. But the Third Prince didn't stop; for he had expectations on his shoulders, a weight he must carry to the finish.

  Ciel managed to evade the first second of this furious assault. But he was forced to change his pn when Ming Xuan's projectiles scored hits on his carriers, reducing the mechanical marvel to broken shards. His bance sabotaged, the Lord of Union nearly toppled. Yet he managed to lean down to activate his backup pn: another grenade set beneath his sleight, this one set to repulsion.

  He bsted upward in a calcuted leap. His drones veered off, liberated from their duty. Ciel surfed the sky, spinning in a trick and closing the distance. A brief glimpse revealed he had only a hundred meters to overcome. Those steely eyes watched the worthy opponent pull another arrow to nail him midair. His mind spun through strategies: Ether rifle—no, Ming Xuan was putting absolute effort into this; drones probably wouldn't deter the stolid wall of bravery; transference markers would be sniped down for certain.

  "Mandrake," Ciel whispered, charging himself with White Mana and Aura. "You have a good kid, you bastard."

  WHITE MAGIC RANK II: STRENGTHEN

  Ming Xuan released the arrow, twisting with all his resolve, dreams, and prayers. He didn't realize until it took flight, where tensions etched in this mysterious assaint clinging to the metal pte became clear. His attacker was waiting for the exact second, when the trajectory of this final shot was affirmed, before unching his counter.

  Ciel detonated another repulsion grenade against his armor pte, using it as a jump pad to sail past Ming Xuan's arrow. The shot cleaved through transport and clouds alike, but that didn't matter. What mattered was the archer couldn't reload before the Lord, powered by strengthening spell and Aura, nded before him.

  "Protect the Prince!" Men yelled valiantly as one, but they failed. The remaining drones which had carried Ciel gave their existence, rocketing toward Ming Xuan's barrier in a series of explosions.

  The Lord of Union descended amidst fmes and fury. He met his opposition in those crimson eyes. He let out a mighty exhale, twisting his body in full leverage and buried a punch cd in Aura and empowered by White Mana into the Third Prince's cheek.

  The air exploded. It, and the body of the prince in cquered armor tumbling across the air, signaled the end of this duel.

  Men holding shields scattered and fell. Their Prince hit the ground in a colossal smash, but the combat-inventor stood, albeit stumbling from his perilous ride.

  Ciel, stretching over the men he had beaten, addressed them all. "You fight well. There is no one who can defeat you in a ranged battle. That is certain," he admitted, thanking himself for closing the distance in time to snatch his victory.

  Yet Ming Xuan rose anyway. His face marred by a nasty swell, but his legs refused to fall back, not when the capital of Da Ming was ever so close.

  "I cannot let you pass," he decred.

  Ciel walked up to the man. His b coat sputtered in the winds. A drop of liquid shadow spshing from it hit the ground, and from it emerged a box created from sieves framed with massive longitudinal sound-cards. A megaphone materialized in his hand. The pair of steely eyes narrowed at Ming Xuan as he spoke the truth: "I don't need to go past you. This hill is tall enough. I recommend you cover your ears."

  He put on noise-canceling headphones and spoke into the megaspeaker to focus and magnify his voice at the capital. His volume, even when mostly directed elsewhere, was so thundering it sent Ming Xuan into a deafening stupor.

  "MANDRAKE, THIS IS CIEL. I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR THIS. COME OUT AND MEET ME IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE I AM NOT DOING FAMILY THERAPY FOR FREE!"

  ---

  In the capital of the Yulong Empire, all districts heard the strange voice echoing from far away. All of them knew it referred to their Emperor, but only some paid attention. The outer district, where the poor lived, knew it had nothing to do with them. The middle district, where trade and community thrived, lifted their ears, their faces scowled and smirked at the anticipation of these rumors.

  But it was in the innermost district, the seat of power, where the reaction was most imminent.

  Inside the hall of the Dragon Pace, held up by architecturally orchestrated columns of jade, a figure behind the golden veil shivered. He knew that voice. There existed only one being who talked to him like this. In the artificial hall of golden tiles and loathsome stairways, Mandrake's eyes welled with tears.

  "How presumptuous!" the clueless interpreter screeched at the nearby official. "Go and silence the source of this—"

  But the thundering threat wouldn't let them go.

  "MANDRAKE, IF YOU DO NOT SHOW UP NOW, I WILL START TALKING ABOUT YOUR—"

  To every official's surprise, the God-Emperor didn't waste any time. The Lord of Torrential Skies reacted for the first time in thousands of years, transforming into an emerald coiling dragon and bursting through the roof of his castle, much to the screech and panic of every man present. Tiles and frames rained into that hall, but he did not care.

  Mandrake's enormous celestial form, rge enough to cover the capital in his shadow, hit the open skies, halted to reorient himself, and bsted away at subsonic speed toward that voice. He covered kilometers in an instant to see an old friend: the Lord with steely eyes and steely hair.

  Their first greeting was simple.

  "Ciel, stop!" shrieked the panicking Lord. "Leave my seashell collection out of this!"

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