Page 142

The Clock rewinds and Emily finds herself back aboard Calypso in full control, guiding the ship towards Erenmoor from the engine room. She breaks her meditation, opening her eyes that glint with a cold, calculating light.

There’s no way I can actually block that spell if he aims it at Calypso. Even a glancing blow instantly tore through my boot, so none of my spells will be enough to block it, but I may have a chance to reduce the power.

Emily stands up and starts walking through the ship to her workshop.

He can’t not attack us because it will look bad for his family, and he can’t outright miss for the same reasons, but what if I indicate the least vital area of the ship, then set up some barriers to reduce the damage that gets through? That may work.

She steps into her workshop and looks over the tools set up against the walls.

“I may have to rely a little on luck for this,” she mutters, one of her hands resting affectionately on The Clock’s pouch as she pulls up her system and confirms that the extra requirement on her quest has reset to not complete. “Good thing I can keep trying till the dice fall in my favour.”

***

Emily spends the night working on the ideas in her notes to handle the coming battle before passing control of the ship back to the crew as day comes, instructing them to set down near Erenmoor once again.

Instead of sleeping, Emily meditates and enters the Spellweave to continue working on a spell for the coming assault. She leaves the engine room six hours later and calls everyone to their stations to set off before activating the ship’s array once again.

The flight towards the border is uneventful, the only difference being that this time Emily spots a well-camouflaged outpost hidden in the sands as they pass over it a few hours before the first scouts arrive. She ignores it and keeps her eyes on the horizon, waiting for the scouts to show up.

The moment she spots the faint outline of five ships in the distance, she leaves the bridge and makes her way to the drop hatch. She steps out, plummeting to the sands below before breaking into a sprint, boosted by lightning step. The ships in the air spot her approach and hatches open on either side of them as ten armoured gunmen lean out to fire on her.

Emily weaves between their shots with ease, the distance between them quickly closing as she uses air walk to rise up towards their ships. Panic grows on the soldiers' faces, but they’re helpless to stop her as Emily reaches them and dives straight into the first scout ship through the open hatch, tackling the shooter to the floor.

She lands straddled on the woman’s chest, pinning both of her arms to the floor with her knees. The poor soldier fruitlessly tries to struggle against Emily’s immense strength, but Emily quickly pulls a hollow needle from her belt, filled with a potion brewed from a sominal bomber’s venom, and stabs it into the woman’s neck. Her eyes lose their focus almost instantly, and a few moments of slowly weakening attempts to escape later, her eyelids flicker shut as she falls into a deep slumber.

Emily places her fingers against the soldier’s neck, sending a pulse of machina into her body to scan her, checking the effectiveness of the sleeping potion and adding more data to her growing collection of information on the human body.

“She should stay asleep for eight hours,” Emily mutters with a satisfied nod. “I can dilute it more next attempt if I want, I only need them unable to pursue me.”

She rises from the sleeping woman’s chest while sending a strong pulse of machina into the ship below her feet, quickly understanding its blueprint so she can make her way to the cockpit. Lightning sparks between the floor and her feet as she shoots through the narrow confines of the small ship, arriving in the cockpit in the blink of an eye.

The pilot tries to fight back, pointing his revolver at the door and unloading six shots into the hallway behind as he hears her footsteps approaching, but Emily easily weaves through the shots. She watches his eyes and barrel, slipping to the side each time he pulls the trigger and dodges before each bullet leaves the barrel.

“Shit! Mar-” the pilot screams as Emily charges into the small control room, springing up and slamming her knee into the man’s chest, cutting off his call for help and knocking him back into his control panel without any air left in his lungs.

As he’s stunned and wheezing for breath, Emily jabs him in the neck with another full needle, knocking him out. The footsteps of the final two members of the crew ring through the ship, quickly approaching, so Emily sets the pilot down in his seat again and tucks herself in beside the door, waiting just out of sight.

“Lazlo, where I-” the first soldier starts as he charges into the room, cutting off as Emily’s fist slams into the side of his ribs, knocking him aside.

The sturdy metal plates of his armour protect him from the brunt of the damage, since she didn’t use her full strength, but neither he nor the man in the corridor behind him have time to react as two needles are thrown out, digging into their necks and delivering a dose of sleeping potion directly into their bloodstreams.

Emily glances out of the window, seeing Calpyso still far ahead of the ships, before turning back and dashing to the nearest hatch to leave the ship. She opens the vents on the balloon with her machina, starting the scout on a steady descent before leaping from a hatch towards the next closest ship.

It doesn’t take her long to repeat her process, sending all five scouts down to safely rest on the desert floor, and she returns to Calpyso before it even passes them. A glance at her mana and machina reserves raises a satisfied smile to her lips for a few moments.

They should be almost back to full by the time we reach the main army.

Emily settles on top of the ship in the open as they fly quickly towards the soon-to-be battlefield, pulling the Whisper from her belt and laying it in her lap. She gently runs a hand over the intimately familiar body of the gun with machina sparking between her fingers and the cold metal, feeding her information about its internal condition.

She’s starting to see quite a bit of wear. I should give her some maintenance after this fight, especially given how much I’m gonna use Overdrive.

She racks back the bolt, catching the bullet that flies out of the breech as she does before sliding the magazine out and placing the bullet back into it. She tucks the old ammunition away and pulls out another magazine, this one with an engraving of a small ice crystal on the side, gently sliding it into place before pushing the bolt forward again.

Emily lifts the stock to her shoulder, laying her cheek against it and staring through the scope as she watches the horizon for the waiting army with her trigger finger flat against the gun’s body.

She remains motionless for the rest of the flight to the shore, perched above the ship like a gargoyle until the moment the distant defensive formation comes into view. The instant she can clearly make out the mounted artillery cannons on the ground, Emily takes a long, deep breath.

She feels the wind against her skin, the thinness of the air entering her lungs, and the dry heat distorting her distant target as her mind burns through calculations and she slowly adjusts her aim, her eyes scanning across all twenty of her targets. A minute later, as the cannons finally enter her range, still far from theirs, Emily pours machina into her gun, flooding it with over two hundred units of the buzzing energy for the first shot alone.

The gun crackles with power as Emily flicks it into full and pulls the trigger before quickly racking the bolt and mechanically moving the barrel to a new position. She keeps firing until all ten rounds in her magazine are flying through the air leaving crackling trails of electricity in their wake.

The bullets shoot forward at dazzling speed, falling in ten identical arcs and ploughing into the firing mechanisms of the grounded artillery cannons before the mages standing on guard beside them have time to activate their defensive arrays. The bullets crumple and burst against the metal constructs, releasing the magic payloads within and instantly covering the cannons in a thin layer of frost.

The soldiers manning the artillery stare at the large guns in disbelief, glancing up at the ship far in the distance with fear as cold as the ice beside them at the deadly efficiency of the shooter, but Emily herself doesn’t bat an eye. Instead, she calmly drops the magazine from her gun and slams a new one into place.

This time, instead of targeting ten cannons at once, she only targets five. She sends two bullets towards each of them, one riding the tail of the other a few metres behind. Expectedly, before her second volley of shots can land, ten earthen domes rise to surround the remaining functioning cannons. However, the defences prove futile when a single normal bullet punches a small hole in them that the ice bullets enter through, hitting the cannons and freezing them up all the same.

Still not relaxing, Emily repeats this one last time, binding up all twenty artillery emplacements before lowering the Whisper with a small, satisfied grin.

Step one complete.

She reloads her gun with a magazine of modified fire rounds before stepping off the front of the ship and falling to the ground. She softens the fall with an updraft of wind before casting lightning step and running towards the army ahead.

Next to deal with the bombers. This step would be a little easier if I knew their blueprints, but I don’t trust them not to blow themselves up the moment I get close, and that explosion looked like it would hurt.

As she runs across the open sands, she sees the bombers and boarders separating from the floating interceptors to start approaching Calypso. She lifts the Whisper, sliding to a halt and dropping to the floor just out of the infantry’s range, waiting for the attacking ships to pass over her.

The moment the bombers pass her, Emily begins firing at their rear propellers. All five rounds smash into their targets, lodging into the central shafts of the spinning blades propelling the ships forward before superheating, turning into small molten pellets of metal within seconds. The propellers all become unstable before two fall off and the other three seize up as the bullets run out of power and cool down.

The suicide bombers start to lose speed, but just before all of them find themselves floating dead in the sky, one of their propellers manages to unjam itself and start moving again. Unfortunately for them, a second shot from Emily quickly crushes any hope the pilot had left of continuing his mission.

The shots that went just behind the shaft and its connection to the ship worked the best.

The five bombers begin letting steam out of their balloons, dropping to the floor to meet Emily as she reloads a fresh magazine full of high explosive rounds. She points her gun at the backs of the ten boarders heading for Calypso as a few small bullets and hefty cannonballs land in the sand around her.

The ground troops have pushed towards me. I need to make this quick.

She pours more machina into her rifle and unloads the magazine into the sky. A single shot flies into the circular exhaust on the back of each boarder, detonating inside and taking part of the ship with it. Half of the ships simply lose a few of their propellers and slow down drastically while shuddering unstably in the air, but the other half have much larger detonations as large fires burst through the hull at their backs, ripping all their propellers off and killing a few crew members inside.

ˉˉˉˉˉ

-Leave the country without killing any of your pursuers (Failed)

_____

“Shit,” Emily mutters without a visible reaction on her face. “This may take a few tries, but it should work. They aren’t fast enough to catch Calypso any more even if I just remove their boosters and a few props.”

She turns her attention away from the useless ships and over to the large remaining force.

I may as well practice taking down the big ones.

Emily sends the Whisper into her belt as she pushes herself up from the sand, scrambling forward and to the side to avoid the hail of bullets flying towards her previous shooting position. She calls upon her elemental connection as she runs, and after a few moments a familiar azure glow seeps from her eyes as lightning crackles along her skin. She pours power into her legs as she shoots into the nearby infantry formation before they can blink, focusing on the interceptor ships that have moved forwards to target her as well.

The shooting from overhead stops as their target enters their ranks, but Emily easily weaves between the melee weapons the soldiers draw to try and hold her down. She ducks under every blade and sidesteps every heavy mace, only struggling slightly when the soldiers close ranks around her to try and use their bodies as a shield.

It would be easier if I could kill them… But I shouldn’t get into the habit during my practice.

She leaps off the ground and over the grouped soldiers, exposing herself to their gunfire again as she rises above the crowd. Not batting an eye, Emily produces solid footholds of crackling charge and continues rising up towards the interceptors above, still weaving between the bullets trying to catch her and taking a few shots to the torso that her armour blocks.

She reaches the front of the first interceptor with only a few bruises and clings onto the hull just above the bridge. She sticks her feet and her left hand to the ship using the lightning crackling around her while drawing back her other fist. A thin film of crackling plasma wraps her fist like a gauntlet before she thrusts it forward, drilling a hole in the ship.

The lightning covering her fist floods into the control room below, stunning everyone and preventing them from fighting back as Emily pulls a grenade from her belt. She pulls the pin and drops it through the hole she created before setting the ship to descend with a pulse of machina and leaping towards her next target.

She doesn’t stay to watch as the grenade detonates with a muted pop, filling the bridge with gas and sending the stunned crew to sleep. The large ship plummets to the floor, and the soldiers below start frantically running to escape the falling heap of metal, completely forgetting about their enemy dancing above their heads.

Emily takes down three more of the interceptors before the first ploughs into the sand below, and a satisfied grin transforms her features as she hears the heavy impact.

This will work. This is enough chaos for Calypso to fly right over without me even on board. Everyone has time to avoid death as long as they react quickly. Now all that’s left to worry about is Virgil.

Before she can feel too pleased with herself, Emily hears the grounded artillery begin firing, sending several shells towards Calypso. Her grin vanishes, and she quickly activates The Clock while glancing over at the mages holding an array of fire spells up to the magical ice encasing the cannons.

And maybe I’ll make those bullets a bit stronger.