Chapter Twenty-Six: Projectiles Needed Ahead

“They’re here, aren’t they?” Yoshihisa Takizawa muttered to himself as he stood before the sedimentation tank.

The mosquitoes he’d released earlier had brought back their reports: the enemies, who had been teleporting wildly about the plant, had changed their pattern. Two of them were now charging relentlessly toward his location, only using the hunter’s divine transmission when surrounded. The third had vanished. Though not a combat specialist, Takizawa could still guess their intentions—most likely, the two vanguards were meant as a diversion, while the hidden one would strike a decisive blow from the shadows.

“Giant lizard.”

With that thought, Takizawa reinforced the defenses at his side. A massive lizard, over six meters long—larger than its original form—emerged from the pool, swallowing both the dragon cultist and the sea cucumber beast guarding him.

The lizard’s razor-sharp, saw-edged teeth and tail, nearly as long as its body, gave Takizawa an added sense of security. Now, his defenses were not only stronger, but also better able to impede any enemy who dared approach.

But all of this, he knew, was futile.

Takizawa understood perfectly well that his tactics were mere exercises in quantity. A mere hundred beasts was far too few to change the outcome in any significant way.

If only Tyros were here, he’d surely devise something better. If the leader were present, it would go without saying—if all went well, it would take just three seconds to eliminate all three foes.

But Tyros had lost his mind at the very start, and the leader, who possessed the “Eye,” was the true linchpin of this operation. Even the leader’s Impermanence Technique could fail; they couldn’t stake everything on one person… and thus, things had come to this.

No one could help him now—a researcher ill-suited to battle, standing alone in the world’s most anomalous city. Defeat and then death were inevitable, a matter only of time and sequence. Would he fall to the specialists, or be obliterated at last by the city’s official forces?

Takizawa couldn’t help but reflect: if only he’d never encountered Alice Aidal, how smoothly everything might have gone!

Even so, he would fight.

To buy the leader more time.

To wear down the specialists’ strength as much as possible before that final moment arrived!

With the last transmission from the mosquito swarm, he dismantled his smaller scouting beasts and reconstituted several large monsters.

Takizawa raised his eyes. The kingdom’s hunter and the empire’s battle specialist were advancing steadily, step by step.

Centered around the dragon cultist, dozens of ferocious monsters formed defensive lines as sturdy as city walls. Shielded by such impregnable protection, Takizawa spoke: “It seems you’ve figured out how to counter my divine transmission.”

“Oh my, you’re quite self-aware. Your resistance is pointless—don’t waste everyone’s time. Just stand there and don’t move, won’t you?” Alice twirled a short arrow in her hand.

“I will fight. Even if I’m doomed to fail, I will fight… Even if I can’t kill you all, I’ll make sure at least two of you die. I will not let you approach the leader.”

“You don’t seem as lost to madness as those two other aberrant sorcerers. That’s rare for a malignant sorcerer.”

“Malignant sorcerer… No, you don’t understand. I have never lost my reason—I have merely failed, whether in the institute before, or three years ago in the kingdom, whether in research or in my Impermanence training, it’s always been the same…”

Takizawa’s words made the two women all the more wary.

The masked woman raised her blade. “Three years ago, in the kingdom?”

“You do not understand… You do not know what you’re obstructing. You call the gods a calamity.”

Takizawa’s speech grew more fluid, his pauses fading.

“But I understand. I know what the dragon is. I know what their arrival would mean for the world. You, ignorant of the truth, will never accept it—so we can only fight here. That is the tragedy of small, fragile life!”

“We, I, we fight to change this innate shortsightedness and misfortune, for the gods’ advent! That is why I will not surrender, why I will not give up…”

As if summoning a beast, Takizawa pressed his hands together.

With an unprecedented fervor, the somber man roared, “For the birth of a new world, for the dawn of new life, I will offer up everything!”

At his cry, the failed water beasts opened their mouths in unison, unleashing dozens of high-pressure streams at the opposing women.

“He’s a lost cause! This guy looks rational but he’s actually in worse shape than Tyros!” Without another word, Alice grabbed the masked woman beside her. Their bodies vanished from their spot, reappearing behind the first wave of beasts.

The combat specialist casually slashed two monsters to pieces. “Let’s stick to the plan. By the way, what was he just babbling about?”

“If I could understand that, I’d be a dragon lunatic too. Take this—Shadow Blue Orchid: Azure Sea!”

The blue-haired hunter unleashed her power-hungry technique once again. The little blue orchids blossomed in all directions, turning everything in sight into a sea of deep blue flowers.

She hurled ten short arrows. Her psychic armament darted at breakneck speed, dispatching the beasts encroaching on the pair one by one.

Once shattered by the arrows, the beasts took thirty seconds to regenerate. They had to reach Takizawa’s true body before then! The dragon cultist was clearly aware of their plan, directing the beasts meant to counter charges to the front. “Rhinoceros!”

A massive rhino, its hide thick enough to withstand even the ink blade’s blows, charged from behind. In a flash, the masked woman darted before it. “Invisible Strike.”

Her delicate fist struck the rhino’s head. The very next instant, the beast exploded from within!

Takizawa cried out in astonishment, “What is that?!”

“A martial art. You only reinforced the hide—inside, your beasts are as fragile as ever. After all, they’re just water.”

Takizawa’s miscalculation bought the two women more time to advance. With eighteen seconds until the first wave regenerated, only the last two waves, plus the specially made giant lizard and sea cucumber, remained to defend the somber man.

Now, Takizawa hesitated. He had expected the hunter, given such an opening, to immediately teleport beside him for an attack. But even with victory within reach, the enemy remained vigilant—she was guarding against a counterattack, ready to retreat at any moment, just as he was wary of the third, missing foe.

Now that the imperial specialist had figured out his monsters’ properties, and the hunter had brought forth techniques he’d never anticipated, beasts that were supposed to balance quality and quantity were losing their edge on both fronts.

The two women, each more fearsome than a lioness, had already torn through the penultimate line of defense. Ten seconds left…

Takizawa made up his mind. Before those ten seconds were up, he had to take out at least one of them! The psychic sorcerer played his hand, pouring his strength into the pool behind him and summoning beasts with blinding speed: “Tiger, lion, locust, mantis…”

“Biotech—Meat Wall—!!”

A voice from above made Takizawa gape in shock.

He saw a gray-haired youth hefting a slab of meat large enough to cover the entire pool—a massive, circular cap marked with ominous green patterns, from which countless tendrils hung like some berserk aberrant creation.

Splash! The sanitation-type Biotech Meat Wall landed with a heavy thud, instantly fulfilling its purpose: not a drop of dirty water splashed out!

The beasts Takizawa had just summoned were torn apart by the impact before they could even move. He hurried to summon new monsters, but the sensation from the pool made him lose his composure entirely: every beast was being destroyed before it fully formed!

A suspicion dawned in the former researcher’s mind, but his scientific instincts recoiled in protest. “This is, this is—?!”

“This is one of the city’s notorious breakthroughs from the white coats a few years back: the Biotech Meat Wall, designed to work with Biotech Sludge. The selling point is its ability to rapidly break down organic matter in wastewater and absorb odors, dramatically enhancing the plant’s efficiency. It was a hit the moment it was developed.” Gong Sun Ce descended from the air, calmly standing atop the meat mass. “After breaking the beasts’ cores, I noticed there was no sand or gravel. Your failed water beasts aren’t made from sewage, strictly speaking, but from water—the source of all life—combined with organic decay.”

The psychic adjusted his glasses. “That’s why you’re so powerful here, in a sewage plant. But it also makes this your nemesis—inside the beasts, the organic matter is easily devoured by the Biotech Meat Wall. Without their core, they’re just plain water, useless as vessels for you. In other words, you can’t replenish your forces here, Yoshihisa Takizawa.”

What had just happened? The ex-researcher finally understood. While he’d focused on the main battle, the psychic had gone solo, hefting the giant meat slab, using his powers to cross half the plant, and at the crucial moment, smashed the city’s biotech creation into the pool!

Takizawa’s fingers trembled. “How… this is absurd… A mass of meat feeding on organic matter in water, growing rapidly?! How could they have developed such a thing!! And put such an unsafe experiment into actual use years ago?!”

The young man with glasses rose ever higher. “Why not? In this city, we get runaway experiments every other week—a few more slabs of meat won’t matter. But never mind that—worry about yourself, Mr. Takizawa.”

“—!”

Takizawa snapped out of his shock, recalling his original purpose. He had to deal not only with the psychic, but also those two terrifying women! Just a few seconds left—was time still not up?! In a panic, Takizawa sent his remaining beasts forward. “Giant lizard!”

The lizard raised its massive tail—

“It’s certainly enormous.”

But in those few distracted seconds, the final line of defense was breached. The blue-haired hunter grinned wickedly, reaching out to touch the lizard’s head. “No need for guilt when it’s just a beast… Shadow Blue Orchid.”

And in an instant—

It was as if an eraser had wiped away a pencil drawing.

A huge portion of the monster vanished. Half its head, half its torso, and the filthy core—all disappeared from where they stood, materializing atop a distant flower.

Takizawa’s strongest defense, painstakingly crafted, was gone without warning. Dizzy from the relentless surprises, he stammered, “That’s… teleportation… could it be?!”

“Quick on the uptake, aren’t you. Just as you guessed, I can teleport anything I touch between flowers—including only part of it.” Alice gestured invitingly. “Your turn, battle specialist.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle enough not to kill you.” The masked woman’s ink blade morphed into a spear.

She hurled it forward. The black spear pierced the sea cucumber’s hide, then Takizawa’s clothes, launching him out of the beast and into the air.

“Aaahhhhhhh!!!”

The dragon cultist screamed in terror, like a roller coaster passenger thrown from the car on a sharp turn.

Gong Sun Ce caught the pallid, long-haired man with his power and shrugged. “Welcome to the City of the Vaulted Sky.”

He tapped the cultist lightly, sending him into unconsciousness.

The just-regenerating monsters collapsed, dissolving into foul-smelling puddles.

Gong Sun Ce opened his pocket watch and checked the time.

“8:20 p.m.—the dragon cultist, Yoshihisa Takizawa, is incapacitated. Interrogation’s up to you. Squeeze whatever intel you can out of him.”

As he spoke, his altitude continued to rise.

The hunter’s face grew grim. “I’m glad we beat him, but—hey, Gong Sun Ce, is that thing under your feet getting bigger?”

“I’ve lost my appetite for tonight,” the masked woman said, glancing up.

Now that she thought of it—

Why had the workers taken the Meat Wall from above this pool during the evacuation?

The reason was obvious: with the endless flow of wastewater, even with the usual security, the Biotech Meat Wall was especially likely to come into contact with excessive sewage. Leaving that thing here unsupervised was a terrible idea! While hauling it away before evacuating, the staff had probably joked and laughed about it.

And just now, a certain psychic had unceremoniously hurled the dangerous meat slab into the pool.

Which meant—

The meat that should have been lying quietly atop the pool was now swelling at an alarming rate—a rapidly growing, gray-blue mass, streaked with green bioluminescence, lifting the bespectacled youth ever higher.

“Don’t worry, I’m experienced in this! Just chop it into pieces or smash it to bits and it’ll be fine—so why are you two running?!”

“Don’t try to fool me—there’s a pool of sewage under that thing! I don’t want to see what happens when it bursts! You handle it yourself!!!”

“Agreed. I’d like to keep my appetite tomorrow.”

“You’re really going to leave me alone with this mass of meat?! Hey, don’t run!!”

In the end, it took the psychic nearly two minutes to subdue the rampaging Biotech Meat Wall.

All by himself.