It was almost morning when we finally reached our destination.  We had been attacked by two more packs of Silver Direwolves on the way, but we were much more prepared than the first time.  Liara and Johan were able to snipe one doggy each, before the other two were even able to reach our group.  Then the Archers double-teamed one of them, while Granny Arin brutalized the other.

The third encounter was nearly identical to the second one, except that Mei went out of her way to help the three of them.  I just carried a case in each hand and patiently waited for the battles to end.  All the Yin and Death Qi was starting to make me sick, so I didn’t want to waste my energy fucking around.

It took a while, but we were eventually able to find a decent spot on the eastern side of the mountain.  The reason why it was so difficult, was because we had to navigate some tunnels at a certain point.

Even though the moon went down below the horizon, the sun still wasn’t starting to rise yet, so it was darker than usual.  The five of us were sitting around near the edge of a terrifyingly steep cliff, which basically dropped down an entire mile.

I could easily see the top of the other mountain, which was essentially just a few acres of flat land, with a few trees here and there.  However, the most important thing was that huge courtyard at the center.  It was roughly two kilometers away, but also a few hundred meters lower than our elevation.

Liara and Johan could use their eyes, but I needed a monocular in order to see the people who were scurrying around down there.  When I heard the word ‘school’, I was thinking something more along the lines of a giant castle-like British academy.

Although, I guess I should have expected it to be an ancient Chinese courtyard-mansion thing.  It was basically a rectangular white-stone wall, with a giant silver gateway facing northwards.  The roofs of the buildings along the sides were all black and at the very back, there was a huge staircase that led up to a massive ivory pagoda.

While we were still scoping out the situation and picking our targets, there was a thunderous noise coming from the southern skies.  Since the Titanic Fury and the Stingray had stopped firing their cannons hours ago, we were all startled a bit.

“What the fuck is that thing?!” Liara wasn’t the only one who was surprised though.  There was a gigantic silver football-shaped object soaring through the air and below it was a gargantuan steel-plated warship.

“A zeppelin?  But how in the hell can a balloon like that carry something so big and heavy?  No, wait, is that even a balloon?!  Holy shitsauce!” Yep, it was a goddamn flying sperm whale that seemed to defy the laws of physics.

Mei shouted “That, isn’t that the Lunar Skyship?!  Why would they bring something like that here?!  Isn’t that the Silver Aerial Behemoth?!  That’s a Rank-A Beast!”

Granny Arin yelled “Don’t worry about that and just start killing people!  Well, not you, but Little Ares, Liara and Johan!  Get to work!  The faster we end this, the sooner we can get the hell off this island!”

I had already taken out my rifle and was loading it with the ‘green’ bullets.  By the time I laid down prone onto the ground, that so-called ‘Lunar Skyship’ crashed through some sort of magical barrier which seemed to be protecting the Silver Sword School.

Then dozens of Adepts started pouring out of the courtyard, along with hundreds of Apprentices.  They were mainly guarding the northern gates, but had been positioned all along the walls as well.  From such a distance, I normally wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them all, but fortunately, they were nice enough to have some fairly distinguishing features.

First of all, everyone wore black robes, so they all seemed to blend together at a glance.  All of them wielded silver swords, though there was a decent amount of variation.  The key feature that made it easy to tell them apart was the fact that they all had bracelets around one of their wrists.  It was essentially just a simple device that was bound to their individual Qi and would allow them to safely enter the school grounds or pass through the island’s defensive formation arrays.  

Novices only had a simple silver chain, Apprentices had a single tiny sword ornament, Adepts had two and Experts had three.  There weren’t supposed to be any Masters, but if they existed, then they wouldn’t expose their identities so easily.

A blindingly bright arrow of light suddenly shot out from behind me, followed by a deafening twang of a bow and accompanied by a sonic boom.  It wasn’t just me who was surprised, even Mei was screaming and holding her ears in agony.  Granny Arin was standing farther back into the cavern, in order to guard the tunnels that led to our relatively exposed location.

Johan complained “Aren’t we supposed to be ‘stealthily’ sniping them?  Ugh, seriously, if they weren’t so distracted by that damn whale, they would definitely be coming after us about now…”

Yeah, regardless of how much noise we made or how obnoxiously bright our attacks were, they didn’t have time to worry about us.  After all, there were all kinds of shiny blade-like Qi blasts flying up into the sky, trying to kill the dozens of beefy ‘Lunar Priests’ who were raining down outside the courtyard.

Their appearances ranged from giant goat-like men, to women who literally appeared to be anthropomorphic hippopotamuses.  There were plenty of guys and girls who looked like normal humans, dressed in either heavy silver armor or golden robes, wielding all sorts of weapons.  Nobody had a gun, but I did see someone carrying what looked like a hand-held ballista.

The most dangerous people were the three High-Priests.  One of them was Raphael, in his ominous devilish form.  I couldn’t be certain from such a distance, but he seemed significantly stronger than I remembered.  Then there was a beautiful ‘man’ or maybe it was a woman, I couldn’t really tell.  They were wearing a fancy jade-green dress and lots of gaudy jewelry, while wielding a massive white feathery fan as a weapon.  With a single flap of that thing, an enormous tornado was created.

That last person was an extremely ancient-looking woman, who didn’t have any amazing traits that I could see at first glance.  Her weapon was an old, crappy-looking rusty and broken short-sword.  As for clothing, she wore a brown burlap dress, which had a ton of holes in it.  She was short, wrinkly, scrawny and kind of reminded me of my grandmother: right before she died.  All her hair was long, white and she was starting to go bald in several areas, but that lady didn’t give any fucks.  

When she landed on the main building’s rooftop, I could see an equally old and weak-looking man waiting for her arrival.  The two of them didn’t even fight.  They merely sat down across from each other and started drinking tea together.

It all felt so ‘unreal’.  Honestly, that was the first time I had ever seen a battle between Experts and a large number of Adepts.  Magical abilities were flying all over the place, Apprentices were literally exploding from being caught up in the crossfire and even the buildings were being destroyed.  As for the ‘Lunar Skyship’ or that weird flying sperm whale… They didn’t do anything in particular.

Me, I took aim and fired.  Just like before, the engravings on the gun released a gorgeous display of pretty green flowers all over the cavernous walls and ceiling.  However, no one really seemed surprised or impressed.  Compared to all the crazy shit that we were watching unfold in the distance, our little tricks didn’t amount to much.  We were just side characters.

It wasn’t really possible for us to hurt the Experts from such a distance and it was better to not piss any of them off.  Thus, we continued shooting at the enemy Adepts as best we could.  My first bullet missed the guy I was aiming at by a foot or two, smashing into the stone wall behind him.  Fortunately though, it gave me the opportunity to understand what exactly those viridescent rounds actually did.

There wasn’t much damage upon impact, but a bright-green vine started growing out of the hole.  After a moment of rapid growth, it immediately died, since the plant didn’t have enough nutrients or the proper environment to thrive.  I couldn’t help but mutter, “Azrael… didn’t you steal this trick from Yuri?”