This time I wasn't scared of Obaa-chan. She was fine with JiiJii going, but I was another story. In this situation, I didn't even care about her punishing me for my digressions. It was their fault I was out anyways. Had they stayed home like good fossils, I wouldn't have to go through this.
Yeah!
I wasn't in the wrong... she was. That didn't change the fact about I was still slightly frightened to meet her when all of this ended.
I looked her in the eye for a second and it was frightening.
"Asama Mao, I'm giving you one more chance to come back. I will deactivate the shield for 10 seconds. And if you're not in, you better be ready to deal with the consequences." She picked the dome up and was about to press it.
"I WON'T COME BACK! It's your fault anyway! HMPH!" I turned my back to her and walked away proudly. "Are you gonna ride the bike?" I asked JiiJii but he was already on it and fiddling with the handlebar.
I sat behind him.
"I thought you'd complain about this, Rune." I talked into my lens.
"Well, I mean… the old dude looks like he can solo carry your entire game. There's no way you'd die out there now... So it's fine."
It was vexing how I didn't find his statement wrong. I went outside without fearing my life a bit. The outside I was cautious of while rushing home felt like nothing.
The terrorists were incapable of using magic. That just made them sitting duck. Sure guns were decently powerful but they were still weaker than the weakest fire spell. If there was even a single magic user this whole thing would have been a mess that I couldn't have gotten out of it unscathed. Hell, I would fear my life even.
"By the way, what compelled you to entrust that legendary weapon of your's to kids?" I asked as we drove past the two dead bodies of the terrorists I recently killed.
"I mean, it's just a stick what possibly can you do with a stick."
"'Just a stick' doesn't just get a bit longer..." That came out wronger than I expected. "Actually, how did you even do that?"
"Ah, we're here." He skidded the bike to a halt. Way to ignore me. " Guranko-san, there are terrorists at school, get your drive out, we're heading back to get the villagers together before we head back to my place."
I looked around and there were no terrorists nearby. The dots on the periphery of my vision I could see the terrorists start towards the gate. At this rate, it would be next to impossible to get every elderly to safety.
"Oi JiiJii... the terrorists are started to head towards the school gate."
"Damn it." The old man clicked his tongue. "Guranko-san, gather all the people around here and head to my house, Obaa will let you in." He was rather courteous when in leader mode.
"Got it." So we just went ahead as Guranko-san left perpendicular to us in his scooter.
Our bike was headed straight ahead... straight towards the school gate. I looked over at the speedometer and we were at the very least averaging around 180 kilometres an hour. I had to grab onto JiiJii's shirt to not fall off.
It didn't even take a minute, and the school's gate was already in sight. The sheer crowd of terrorists was larger than any terrorist group we had encountered so far.
And all of them were armed.
"OI! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" I shouted as we headed straight towards the group. "OI!"
Is this how Rune felt when I was about to mess over the terrorist in the hangar?
"Hup!" The man let go of the handlebars.
"LISTEN HER-" JiiJii suddenly jumped, letting go of the bike and grabbing my shirt.
"And here we go." As we were high in the sky, slightly above the trees, the bike slid into a gang of other bikes headed outside.
'I don't get paid enough to deal with this shit.'
"Mao, you will help me guard the gate so that no one gets out until the other villagers make it to our place."
"Us? Against 200 of them?"
"We only have to hold off until the military arrives or until they are all safe, whichever comes first. Remember... Our goal is holding them off."
This man meant business. Business that I wasn't ready for.
"You know I really thought you would head back after I said that I would come with you. I'm really not in any shape to fight. Legit the only thing keeping me awake is the adrenaline." He pulled his hand back and prepared himself to throw me like a javelin.
"We gave you enough to consider... That's on you."
"You, old man, are legitimately evi-" With strong whiplash, I got thrown ahead. Right towards the school gate. "WAAAHHH!!!"
I furrowed my eyebrows and braced for impact. Simply put, I had gotten stronger from using body strengthening the entire day. I was now as strong as a grown man who went to the gym for 300 days 3 years in a row.
That was pretty strong per average standard. BUT NOT TAKE BULLETS RIGHT TO YOUR FACE LEVEL OF STRONG!
I threw my palms to cover my face as a rain of bullets headed towards me.
'I'm gonna die. This man finally killed me.'
While getting thrown to the air, I noticed the shells move closer and closer and closer, until impact. My heart started to beat fast. And I felt all the air leave my lungs.
'i am die. thank u very much.'
But then nothing happened. Like superman, the palms covering my hands deflected any and everything. It felt like nothing more than some stings.
"Stop worrying so much! I put reinforcement on you." A man dashed past me mid-air. "But hurry it up, there's only so much mana this old man can syphon."
I carried through with my momentum until I reached the ground.
Immediately, I planted my left leg and did a full kick against the first terrorist I came in impact with. Leg on his face, the helmet went flying off. I pulled out my gun and gave him a nice headshot.
The sight of fighting became clear. It was a legitimate 100 versus 2 situation.
"EVERYONE WHO HASN'T GOTTEN OUT YET, HEAD TO JIIJII'S PLACE! MY ORDERS!" The old man roared. My ears almost went deaf. Naturally, there was a response. Houses right next to the school started getting vacated. A horde of people started heading out towards our house.
The terrorists, who found fresh prey, took aim.
"Who let you ignore me?" JiiJii fell back and started spinning his spear as fast as possible. Every bullet aimed at the other villagers got deflected by the spear as if this was some modern kung fu movie.
I had my own trifles to deal with. Following through with the momentum I knocked 4 more terrorists down. Of course, they weren't knocked out from just a fall, but they were concussed. The goal was to buy time.
"Old man give me the gay wand!"
"GAE BOLG!" Like a javelin a black rod came flying at me. It was just as heavy as I remembered.
I strengthened my forearm and knocked at least 10 more of them over.
"FLATTEN THEM LIKE A STAMPEDE!" The 14 fallen terrorists blocked the way to 20 more who blocked the way to 50 who blocked the way to the hundred.
JiiJii's fighting style, even without the stick, was a lot more eloquent than my sucker fights. Ancient martial arts, sword arts, everything was on display. Everything had a flow.
And on the other hand, there was me causing a mass stampede. The 14 I knocked down were slowly getting turned to mush.
We continued tossing around the weapons and using them for buying time. The time that flew by in a peculiar way. Every minute felt like a second, but with the passage of a second, my body felt an hour older. This was a strain I was not used to.
But blood drop by blood drop, sweat by sweat, the timer at the corner of my eye dropped down further and further. Until I was standing atop a pile of 100 terrorists who tripped over each other because of JiiJii and me.
I will admit, it wasn't the coolest way of fight. Hitting the rod on grown men's shin to make them fall down. And I also admit that I wasn't the bravest, with that bulletproof skin that JiiJii enchanted for me. It was secure. I understood why he didn't care much about me tagging along or not.
This was still hard work.
Clearly, killing or even fighting these many people was impossible for the two of us. Killing would mean that we needed something capable of getting through their defences. Fighting them would mean that we had to deal with all of them individually.
But blocking their way as they passed through the narrow school gate? We were at a clear advantage. It was like building a dam. Their number played against them.
Moreover, they wouldn't friendly fire a grenade with hundreds of other terrorists there.
And then out of the blue with the incoming wind came the sound of a motor and fluttering wings.
As the terrorists under me began to pick themselves up, we found a chopper in the sky.
"LET'S GO BACK!" Was the old man's immediate response.
The closest military to the secluded village arrived. The battle was a second away from commencing. And we were on the run again.
I admit that I'm not all that happy with how I transitioned from the peaceful arc to this one. I skipped over a few too many years. Which isn't the problem. I just think that it could have been done a little smoother.
So when this volume ends and I have a ginormous stockpile, I'll go back and fix that.
The cover is temporary, I'm working on better character designs.
The choppers quickly went past us.
The way home was a little more than a kilometre away. It was a route I had run across multiple times and familiarised myself with.
It would usually take me 10 or 12 minutes running between school and home. But I never ran that length as if my life depended on it. But even if I did, it would at least take 7 or 8 minutes. I wasn't necessarily slow by any means. By normal standards, I was damn near an athlete by that standard.
But that 7 to 8 minutes were embarrassingly long compared to the time it would take this old man to get home while in his master mode.
JiiJii was carrying me on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The last time I remember seeing the world from this height was in my last life. I was barely 178 centimetres tall now. And I was at the very least 10ish centimetres above what I had gotten used to seeing.
The long sturdy legs on JiiJii didn't belong to a man in his 90s. He was a human. His life span was just as long as a normal man's. He was really just a human who could use mana to some extent.
As he ran carrying me on his shoulder, the first bomb went off meters behind us. The sound shield seemed to have been taken off. Anyway, the military didn't care about who was who. Even though we were still in the vicinity they continued to bombard non-stop.
Seconds after their arrival the battle commenced. Without even a confirmation.
"Yo Rune, make sure none of them shoots us, or the gym." I said over the lens.
After going through all of that it would be tragic if the thing that killed us was a missile fired by our own people. I understood how it might be difficult to distinguish us from the rest of the crowd. I mean I was wearing the terrorist's vest.
"Yeah, I just sent that info over. Ah, and the gym should be fine. It's underground." That run-down building was capable of going underground?! Whoever designed the school clearly didn't have their priorities straight.
"Cool cool." I turned around to check on the destruction. And as far as the eye could see there was destruction.
I wonder how strange this scene would look in the third perspective. A fourteen-year-old boy getting carried away by an old man. I am definitely the villain in this situation. I should be the one carrying someone as ancient as him. But in my defence, I was the one who-
A sudden sound of high pitched static. Like someone was dragging a fork across the blackboard. It propagated around the whole village.
"Eh?" I tried to cover my ears but immediately after that, another deafening sound emerged.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!" A laugh that I couldn't exactly find the origin of. It was loud and deep. And muffled. There was no way the sound of the school's speakers reached all the way over to the middle of the fields. We were halfway home. JiiJii kept on running.
I was suddenly reminded of the sound barrier back at the school's gate. This was definitely sound magic. Moreover, it was high-tier sound magic. There was a powerful mana user among the ranks of the terrorists.
This was disastrous!
I didn't doubt JiiJii's abilities. But I sincerely believed that if there were to ever be a fight amongst someone of that calibre, I might have to see blood. I was definitely sure that I- at the very least wouldn't be able to fight them. Not like this.
The only thing that could have saved us now was getting back home.
"JiiJii hurry up."
"I'm already going as fast as I can."
It made sense. After all, I had a lot of things weighing us down.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!" Like a broken record, the laugh played. Over and over and over. "You heathens finally decided to show up!" The culprit revealed his voice.
The sound of bombs and gunfire.
"What's going on?" I whispered. This was bizarre. I was preparing myself for a hellish sound that would blow my eardrums away. But all I could hear was a taunting voice.
"RIGHT INTO OUR TRAPS!" The man chuckled.
And then abruptly, as if those words were triggers, JiiJii collapsed.
Along with his body, which was moving at a frightening rate before the fall, I got shoved to the ground. Both of us tumbled over. Fallen amidst the dirt, I felt the shield that JiiJii gave me disappear.
I couldn't feel pain… But my body was at its limit of damage. Any more and I would risk death or permanent damage.
I turned over to face the old man, and he looked at me with a bleeding nose.
And then the 'trap' started to close its jaws. The choppers up in the air began to fall. Grenades, debris, the scene inside the school started to make their way outside. There were fires in the fields. Growing by the second.
"DIDN'T ANYONE STOP TO THINK WHY THERE WERE SO MANY OF US? FOR JUST A TINY SCHOOL? HOW PATHETIC! HOW PATHETIC IS THE MAN WHO REACHED OUT TO THE OUTER WORLD AND SNITCHED!" Those words were directed to me.
"YOU SHALL NOW EXPERIENCE THE RETRIBUTION OF GOD! NONE OF YOU BEASTS IS WORTHY TO WIELD MANA! NEITHER THE DEMONS NOR THE ONES WHO ACCEPTED THEM INTO OUR HOLY LAND!" He shouted.
"You can't use mana, can you?" I asked JiiJii.
"I was already nearing my limit." He answered while coughing.
I was reminded of how external mana control wasn't a norm anymore. And if that wasn't the case there was only one thing that explained this. A spell that eats away at people who have little to mediocre amounts of mana-
"Mana poisoning." I turned around to face the sky and put my wrist to my forehead. "There's more than one high-grade mana user here. The military can't deal with this."
"It's just one thing after another." He turned around to face the sky as well. We just laid there as the village was getting laid to waste.
I checked my condition. The kids should be safe, they weren't open to external mana yet just like me. The strong who control the mana would be safe but I doubt there are any on our side. Anyone with a slightly above average amount of mana should experience nausea. But mana poisoning to them would be like mild food poisoning. But anyone who only controlled a small portion of mana would feel it run rampant around their body.
Like JiiJii next to me.
"It's only some time before the battle gets here, you should leave." JiiJii coughed. "I have experienced plenty of life. You should at least be able to walk back. Who knows maybe I'll get back too, once my body calms down." For the first time, he was quaint.
"Stop being sentimental and playing the victim. You're the reason why I'm lying here. The confident old man couldn't even take care of himself." I pushed myself up. The house wasn't all that far away.
I grabbed his arms over my shoulder and started dragging him.
"Oi what are you-"
"Just be silent. It isn't that far away... And my conscience doesn't allow me to just ditch you."
"Pch."
The military wouldn't hold. Probably.
"How strong do you reckon the people who came are?" I asked Rune. I needed a conversation to keep me from passing out.
"Well, they are military, but honestly, most of our strongest are centralised in the capital."
"Small country problems." Basically, the military in the countryside was no stronger than really good policemen.
"You're right about that."
"So the only person we can count on right now are-"
"Your parents and Yuuno."
"MY PARENTS?!" I knew Yuuno was coming but when did my parents decide to show up?!
"They were the first to leave actually. Threw up a storm while they were at it too." Yep, that sounded like them. Nothing can hurt their dear child- me.
It sucked how even the strongest of this country were straight-up weak compared to the previous version of me. Had it been my demon lord self I would have just teleported here after scanning the entire country. A couple of metres passed and the house was in sight.
"I can walk now." JiiJii pushed himself off my back.
"You sure?"
It was rare for a person to survive this high level of mana poisoning, but to be able to suppress it was insane.
"Nhhnn… Can't use magic but just walking should be fine."
"That's what you get for being weak." I commented.
"Hey! I just don't specialize in mana is all." Excuses. At least we were moving faster than when I had to carry the both of us over.
Soon the house was a few steps away.
"Obaa! Open the field for me!" JiiJii called.
"I'm coming!" Obaa-chan yelled. I could see her get dragged outside by Clintarou.
"Are all the old people inside?" I asked.
"Ye, they came and I pushed them all in the bunker."
"Good!" She shouted while disabling the protection field. "Oh." Clintarou ran out of her hand as JiiJii went inside.
He ran with his tongue hanging out and his natural smile. He was going to pounce on me. But I really was in no state. Let's just dodge him bullfighting style. The dog was old but still cheerful.
I sort of bent over to invite him and then got ready to dodge to my left.
"W09F!" He barked before running to the right.
"Now's not the time to pl-" Clintarou charged straight at me.
As I dodged to the left the dog, with his tongue hanging out leapt. To the side.
To the side?
Knowing something was very wrong. Twisted. And with the nauseous feeling of dread in my stomach, I dared to turn my eyes sideways.
Two assailants clad in armour and a helmet. Different from the other terrorists.
And then there was a sound of a gunshot.
My heart stopped.
100K WORDS LESSGOOO! i mean, by now you've read far enough to know how i make the story. I'm just gonna up the hype and write better jokes in the upcoming chapters. so a review or two would be appreciated. 100k is quite a milestone for me.
i decided to throw the 6:30 am upload window out of the window. i will try to upload then, but right now i'm working towards getting 150 chapters in stockpile. so i write til about 7:30 in the morning. meaning that i might miss the 6:30 am uploads.
BUTTT- I will still publish a chapter a day.
sorry for the incovenience.
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