*Bang* My ears were ringing, as I casually used a monocular like a scope for my rifle.  There was an elderly woman in the far-off distance, who was in the middle of decapitating a beefy ax-wielding giant.  Since she was distracted, there was no way for her to stop the green projectile that was soaring towards the back of her neck.

I was aiming at her chest, but at least I managed to hit the bitch.  Moments after impact, she fell to the ground and hundreds of vines started infesting her entire paralyzed body.  “Sweet~!  Try to kill-steal that shit!  Hahaha~!”

Mei was sitting down a few feet away from where I was laying and holding the monocular in place for me.  She also had a pair of binoculars that she was using to ‘spot’ for me.  “Good shot Little Levi… Although these firesticks aren’t very honorable, at least they’re powerful.”

Liara and Johan were already out of breath and taking a break behind us.  It was early in the morning so they didn’t need to worry about attracting attention with their small campfire.  The scent of roasting wolf-meat spread throughout the cavern and even Granny Arin came over to eat with them.

“It really isn’t fair though… You don’t even need to use any Daoist Arts and you’re so weak.  Yet you’re still able to kill those fucking Adepts from so far away!” The Ginger Giant wasn’t nearly as exhausted as the Bulky Beauty, but they were both pretty worn out already.  They had to spend a lot of their Qi in order to fight the doggies on the way there, so it wasn’t surprising.

Mei suddenly shouted “Found one, over there, near the western wall!  Hurry up, she’s gonna get away!” Then she pointed the monocular towards a big-breasted woman, who had bleached blonde hair, tied back into a really long ponytail.  She was elegantly dancing around the battlefield, killing other Adepts with ease.

I muttered “Shit, she’s moving way too much… Can’t you pick someone easier to hit?”

“Levi, just because she’s sexy young woman, doesn’t mean you’re allowed to go easy on her!  Look at how fast she’s killing our allies!  If you don’t do something, more people will die!” I sighed dramatically, but didn’t try to argue.  Besides, it wasn’t as much fun if the target was standing still and waiting for me to shoot them, right?

Honestly, while those Priests of Luna were technically on our side, it’s not like I actually knew any of them.  Raphael was pretty cool, but he definitely didn’t need my help.  Aside from him, everyone else was a total stranger.

When I watched that mysterious blonde bitch using a rapier to slash through the carotid arteries of goatmen and cow-women, I didn’t really feel much of anything.  Practically all the families in the Southern Islands were related to Hua Jiang and had ancestors who were anthropomorphic marine animals.  If they weren’t fish, crustaceans, cephalopods, dolphins, whales or whatever, then they probably weren’t even from the Southern Islands in the first place.

Of course, just because I didn’t care if they died, didn’t mean that I wouldn’t mind accidentally killing one of them.  Friendly-Fire is unavoidable sometimes, but I wasn’t in too much of a rush, so there was no need to risk it.

Once she stopped stabbing people, the busty girl hopped up onto the wall and suddenly rushed over to that old lady that was covered in bright-green vines.  She seemed pretty upset, though I couldn’t hear anything she was screaming and the monocular wasn’t nearly good enough for me to see if she was crying or not.  Regardless, when she bent down, I had a fairly clear shot of the side of her head, so I took it.

That familiar kick and deafening *Bang* didn’t bother me too much at that point, though Mei still flinched.  Even though the bullet was supersonic, that only meant that it was faster than sound.  There was no chance of that girl being able to ‘hear’ the gunshot or even recognizing it as a potential threat, yet she still turned towards my direction almost immediately after I fired the round.

“Fuck!” I couldn’t help but curse, as she stabbed her rapier out and created a whirlpool of icy Qi.  There was a puff of green smoke that impacted the magical barrier, but that was all.  As the shield started to dissipate, I pulled the trigger again.  However, two seconds was plenty of time for her to simply move out of the way.  It wasn’t much of a superhuman feat; the real trick was just that she seemed to ‘know’ when I was attacking.

“Uh-oh… That’s not good!” As I was loading blue cartridges into the opened internal magazine as quickly as possible, Mei noticed a problem.  Although she was only an Adept, that girl was probably level nine or ten.  Which meant that her body’s physical strength was at least four times that of a peak-level Novice.

Now you might be wondering: “So what if she’s strong?  It’s not like she can just fly over and stab you in the face!”  Well, that might be true, but what if she had a gigantic silver hawk to ride?  Yep, she was really pissed and headed straight for us.  No, she actually needed to go through a lot of effort in order to escape the encirclement and the flurry of anti-air, magical attacks that were exploding all around her birdy.

Basically, I still had time to keep her from reaching us.  However, just in case, I shouted “Umm~, you guys might wanna stop fucking around and get back to work!  We’ve got incoming!”

Both Liara and Johan were standing behind me within seconds and had their massive bows trained on the rapidly approaching enemy in the distance.  Of course, the closer she got, the easier it would be to shoot the bitch down.  Not only would her time to dodge be hampered, but the power of our projectiles would be much higher.

Unfortunately, the Rank-E Beast she was riding like a surfboard, was absurdly agile.  You would think that with a person on its back, the hawk wouldn’t even be able to fly at all, but it wasn’t even slightly burdened.  Not only that, but both of them were easily able to see the three of us.

The Ginger Giant roared “Liara, aim for the bird, I’ll take the cunt!” However, although the two of them seemed super-nervous, I wasn’t very worried.

As I got up off the ground, I walked over to my rifle-case and stored the weapon inside.  Then I bent over and opened up my ‘other’ case, pulled out my shotgun and removed the two ‘high explosive’ slugs.  After carefully placing them back into their individual slots, I reached into the box of ammo and grabbed a couple handfuls of buckshot magnum shells.

By the time I returned to the edge of the cliff, Mei was holding her cutlass in a stance and Granny Arin was wielding her giant mallet with a serious expression.  Neither of the two Archers were able to hit the enormous silver birdy.  Although a hundred miles per hour seems fast… At the woman’s current pace, it would still take her a couple dozen seconds to reach us.

When that lady approached within a hundred yards, I was able to see her bright-orange irises quite clearly and her oversized bouncing breasts.  I remember thinking “Inverted nipples?  That’s rare…” before pulling both triggers at the same time.

She screamed “No~!” as her rapier twirled around, actually managing to deflect a handful of those tiny steel ball-bearings.  I wasn’t really aiming at her though.  That bird she was riding took at least five metal balls to the face and one of them pierced straight through its left eye, into its brain.  The only fancy magical effect was that my shotgun released a deafening noise, like an enormous foghorn.

My ears were ringing and I was a little stunned by the ridiculous amount of recoil, but I quickly snapped the gun open and shoved the two other shells into the chambers.  Although I did manage to graze her left cheek and right forearm, the BBs that struck her body didn’t actually do much damage.  She was a peak-level Adept for fuck’s sake!  Her flesh was at least twice as tough as a normal human and her muscles were four times as dense.  More important than all that was the fact that she was wearing a robe that had an absurd amount of durability.  Even when she was struck in the abdomen with one of those gigantic ballista-like arrows, she only flinged a little bit and wasn’t even pushed off of the dead, gliding silver hawk.

With bloody tears pouring out of her bright-orange eyes, she growled “You’re all courting~ death~!”