With everyone now on board with my plan, we were starting the preparations right away.
“Our biggest hurdle will be slowing down that ‘all-star’ guardian team”
“Right, the plan’s fine and all, but we can’t even fight those things head on”
“And even running away isn’t gonna be easy”
The frontline fighters, Ueda and Nakai, added, quite seriously, despite themselves.
They were right, of course. I knew first hand how strong those spirits were. Talking about the time they completely obliterated the superior Rem, created from Tendou-kun’s drops, and even one-shot the versatile Arachne. Their breath attacks were seriously bad news.
If they hit us with those when we’re on the run, we’re pretty much dead. I wasn’t sure even Yamada, with his defensive Job, could withstand that sort of damage.
“Dude, what about my Eis Mist? Don’t think we can use that when they’re chasing us, right? If they lose us and head back to Reina, you’re as good as dead, man”
“Nah, I’ll be fine if they end up coming back. But for this plan to work, we need to make sure they chase after us”
In the chase scene, Yamada will hold the rear as our primary defense wall. In front of him, s.h.i.+mokawa will be in charge of slowing them down with his barrier spells and Rem is to support with arrows.
Then, we’ll have Ueda and Nakai who can’t really do anything other than run, and after them, me in my 2Shade clone, taking the lead riding on Raptor.
“Right, aside from our positions, I also plan on setting some traps, don’t expect too much though”
This’d put me in a real bind. The fact that this cloud zone was pretty much empty. Unlike the jungle zone before this where we had lots of trees and stone to work with, this place was just white gas. Other than that stupid cloud creature we hadn’t seen any monsters either. So monsters drops were off the resources list too. We had to make due with the scarce materials in our square.
“Yeah, so, where are we gonna be leading them?”
“Is it the room with the gas trap? That’s a good place to fight”
If we were trying to literally stop them, we would’ve fought them in the fairy square Reina was in, as Nakai had suggested before. But in a head on fight, we’d be the ones undeniably on the losing side. So that was not an option to consider.
“We bring them here, to this fairy square. The plan is to imprison them here”
“Get real, Momokawa. How’re we supposed to do that when there’s no door?”
Wow, even Yamada caught on; I, shouldn’t make him out to be that stupid, honestly.
“We’ll need to draw away as many of them from as possible. Step 1 is trying to isolate Ayase-san”
“If they get all the way here, dude, you don’t think they’ll get worried and go back?”
“Then we’ll have to pause the operation. I’ll use my clone to see if they come inside, and only then go to Ayase-san. So even if they came back, I’ll be OK.”
If this part of the plan failed, we’d just need to retry with a different room. This wasn’t anything problematic.
“My second reason for choosing here is that this is where we can block the entrance best”
“And? go on”
“We’ll make it look like they caught us in a dead end by running here. Then, when all of the guardians are inside with us, s.h.i.+mokawa, you’ll cast the thickest Aqua Mist you can and you’ll all run out of the square. Once you make sure everyone’s accounted for on the outside, use Aqua Arms.h.i.+eld to block the entrance. The rest of you will use logs to make a wall behind the water barrier.”
This way was much safer than trying to fight 3 guardian beasts at once.
Engard was the only powerhouse among them. Ramdane was bird shaped so I don’t think it can push down a wall, and SOUMA didn’t seem so physically strong either. So long as we can withstand Engard’s tackles from the other side, the barriers should hold.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but your water magic is stronger and easier to use if there’s real water around, right?”
“Nnot exactly like that, but if I had to keep up the s.h.i.+eld for a while, having the water around totally helps”
“But, where are you planning to get those logs?”
“Yeah, we ain’t in the jungle anymore”
“Look around you, we’ve got lots”
I gestured at the fairy walnut trees all neatly lined up around us.
“Eh? Is it really alright to cut these down?”
“Feels like one of those faux pas”
“And we won’t get any more walnuts either”
They were surprisingly adamant about it. I guess having fairy squares as their only safe s.p.a.ce all this while made them a bit attached. Me too, I wouldn’t cut down the trees or break the fountain or ruin the water just for the heck of it.
“I’m sorry for miss fairy too, but there’s no choice”
Life or death and all that. To err is human, to forgive divine, yeah? I sent that little prayer to the statue on the fountain.
“And don’t forget, whether the plan succeeds or it doesn’t, we can’t stay here that much longer. Worry about food later”
Our survival depended on whether we could beat Reina.
“Alright, let’s get right to practice”
The team cheered in response. Also,
“I’m back~”
Someone casually entered the square.
It was me.
Mounted on Raptor, he was a shorty wearing a gakuran. He had a cheeky look to him, with a face that may or may not look too girly. There was only one boy with this face and body type in our cla.s.s.
“Welcome back”
I greeted myself.
I got off from Raptor and walked towards me. And once in front of me I vanished like an illusion in a puff of black smoke.
To be exact, I returned back to my shadow.
“Dude, this s.h.i.+t still creeps me the f.u.c.k out”
“Really? Once you get used to it, it’s kinda fun, actually”
While I was describing the plan, I’d already started practicing movement with the clone from my new curse magic which would become a critical facet of the operation, 2Shade.
2Shade : Touche to your two shades. It speaks, walks and feels apart from you, but in the end, is a simple shadow.
As always, the description was vague flavor text. So I went and tested it for what it’s worth.
To conclude, ‘tis a clone. ‘Tis a true shadow clone.
I still had one ‘self’, but when I used 2Shade, I had two points of view and two bodies to move and two mouths to talk with.
I can’t even describe the dumb look I saw on myself when I first used this one.
It really did do that ‘speaks, walks and feels apart from you’ thing. I’d panicked a little when my senses suddenly doubled but… Once I thought how it was like controlling the player in a video game, I stopped being creeped out.
It’s me, yet not me. I move it but it wasn’t me. Pretty much like holding a controller.
2Shade was much more precise than a mere game controller though. The feel, the degree of freedom and sensitivity that’s at work when I’m moving the clone… It was like I’d leaped past the bleeding edge of modern VR and entered the future era of gaming!
Tears of appreciation aside, I was quite satisfied with the practicality of 2Shade. It was perfect for acting my part of the decoy.
I worked with everyone on the preparations while also getting in more practice with the shadow clone. I had it be carried on Raptor and go back and forth between our and Reina’s place.
It was easy enough to move around in, but moving myself at the same time, there’s where it got tricky. It was like trying to control two pairs of hands at once, not quite something you got to do everyday.
Currently, it’s at the level where I can walk around with the clone while talking with my own mouth. But I can’t walk both quite yet.
Luckily, as per the plan, once the clone made it here, his job would be done. After that, I’d go myself for the last face-off against Reina. Basically, at no point in time did I both had to move.
That didn’t mean I’d stop practicing though. Who knows what the future might hold. I’d be very glad to have the ability to fully control both mes. It was just going to take a while to get the hang of it. But I felt like it’d come with enough practice.
So I’d been doing that. But just running around in it wasn’t so productive considering our lack of time.
Since I shared POVs with the clone, I was fully using it as a scout.
“… Yeeah. Still being a lazy a.s.s b.u.m”
If I closed my eyes I could focus in on the clone’s senses. But on the other hand, if my eyes were open, I didn’t really notice unless I actively thought on it.
I was currently spying on Reina from the half closed door to her fairy square. Of course I made sure to make myself small in a corner, with only my head sticking out. But the walls in this cloud zone were all white and fluffy-like, and my black hair would stick out like a sore thumb, so naturally, I was wearing camouflage.
With those fluffy bits I could easily cut out from the walls, I’d made a ghillie suit. This would be my second time doing this since the basilisk. I simply held the stuff together with blackhair bind, but with this, if I stuck to the wall, I blended in quite a bit.
One day as a camo-spy, I made this observation:
I could see Reina on the far side of the square, laid down beside the fountain and cuddling with guardian beast SOUMA YUUTO. She wasn’t moving much but not asleep either. It looked like they were having some pillow talk.
There’s the question of exactly how much of a ‘conversation’ you could have with that fake Soumkun, but the cloud creature was originally something that used your desires to put you in a paradise like dream. SOUMA surely had this power too, and at this time, he must have been only feeding her answers that made her happy.
It was as if she’d completely forgotten that we’re in a fricking dungeon with how she was blabbering on like they were back at the cla.s.sroom. I could see it as confidence, as she had all those powerful guardian beasts on her beck and call. I could also see it as a pitiful girl trying to escape reality.
Doesn’t matter. You better enjoy it while you can, b.i.t.c.h. Savor those dreams for now.
Right. That instance of observation over with, I returned to my main job.
“A~ttention, one and all, I’ll now be going over the traps, listen up”
I called out to the guys sweating it out as they chopped down the fairy walnut trees. I’m the brains of this operation so that kind of physical labor wasn’t in my job description. Right person for the right job, right?
“s.h.i.+t man, why do we gotta do all the work”
“Come on, it’s not like that, Yamadkun, I’ll help out as soon as I’m done with this”
I admit, part of me was trying to avoid it, but I actually had a job only I could do, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t complain every time.
“Anyway, look at this”
I opened my notebook after everyone gathered at the fountain, which had become sort of a muster point.
“This is a rough map of the route we’re following back. These marks over here are where we set the traps”
Unlike at the goma fortress, this time we knew the lay of the land. It was pretty much a straight line, so although I didn’t think we’d get lost, having a picture in your head should be helpful. You’d be better at escaping at a place you were familiar with.
“Didn’t you say the traps aren’t gonna be much use?”
“Isn’t it just his acid pits?”
I also thought about laying on rotten bogs here and there to try and slow them down… But then I got an interesting idea, and once I tried it, it worked pretty well. Men like a challenge, as they say.
“s.h.i.+mok.a.w.kun, let’s show them”
“Right on, dude”
I wasn’t the only one skipping lumberjack duty. s.h.i.+mokawa, our other magic user, was the same. The two of us had used this time to conceive one particular trap. Now, feast your eyes on what happens when you put together Shaman and Aquamancer ––
“ –– Acid s.h.i.+eld!!”
The mud red liquid in the rotten bog I set up previously, jostled violently.
Waves formed in the bog acid as it got pulled up to a single area. The whole thing quickly clumped together in place, and formed the same shape you’d see in an ordinary Aqua s.h.i.+eld.
But it wasn’t ordinary transparent water, it was my bog acid that this s.h.i.+eld was comprised of. In other words, it was a s.h.i.+eld that could melt flesh and bone to the touch.
“This is s.h.i.+mok.a.w.kun’s Aqua s.h.i.+eld but made with the stuff in my bog”
“And man is it awesome”
s.h.i.+mokawa and I were all smiles.
But alas, the frontliners simply went ‘huh’. Geez, these muscle-brained warrior types just can’t, anyway, leaving aside my complaints at their non-reaction, I did have to do a lot of thinking before coming up with this rather plain looking combo spell.
First, an aquamancer didn’t just control water, but any kind of liquid. We even knew that he could control hot water, as we had found out when he magicked up a water gun to mess around in the bath.
Which meant that his magic didn’t distinguish between hot and cold water. Furthermore, he had no problem with sugar water and salt water either. Heck he could could use the soup in my boar stew for his spells.
As for my rotten bog, the acid in there wasn’t a form of liquid but a product of my curse magic. As just demonstrated, s.h.i.+mokawa even managed to manipulate that –– but it didn’t come so easy.
The first trial was a complete failure. Rotten Bog was curse magic and not recognized as a viable liquid for use in water magic.
As s.h.i.+mokawa was making a fool of himself, pouring his mana into the un-reacting red mud in a dead serious face, I hit on an idea. What if we mixed the acid with water, couldn’t he do it then?
And the result of that: another failure. It wouldn’t move when we added some water. When we poured in enough to highly dilute the bog, that did do the trick, but then, it wasn’t really bog acid anymore; it was water with a little acid mixed in. The most it could do was give you a light sting.
So if water didn’t work, let’s just mix in other stuff. That thought, and subsequent trials, led to something that actually did the trick: s.h.i.+mokawa’s blood.
s.h.i.+mokawa was really, and I mean REALLY, reluctant about cutting himself though. But my instincts as a shaman were screaming that I absolutely must try the mage’s own blood, so I may have been a little forceful getting it out of him.
Teary eyed and looking like he hated my guts, s.h.i.+mokawa chanted his magic and… lo and behold, Acid s.h.i.+eld was born.
All that trial and error later, we’d finally managed a way to (conditionally) control Rotten Bog with s.h.i.+mokawa’s aquamancy. I could say we only succeeded because s.h.i.+mokawa was talented in his Job. I could also say I knew squat about aquamancers out in the world, so the previous opinion was moot.
Regardless, this was a big boon for us. I was happy about it, but there’s also the fact that this turned into a weakness for my rotten bog.
I needed to be careful if s.h.i.+mokawa turned into an enemy somewhere along the line. Or if we met an enemy aquamancer.
“s.h.i.+mok.a.w.kun here will be erecting his usual Aqua s.h.i.+elds and mixing in these Acid s.h.i.+elds while we’re on the run”
Engard could probably bust through a normal Aqua s.h.i.+eld without breaking a sweat, but if he were to get hit with acid after one of his attempts, he might opt for other, slower methods. And even if he does bust through them anyway, he’d have to be sustaining slight amounts of damage.
It’s unknown how well my bog acid will work on a guardian beast, but it’s the best trap we had. It’s all we had.
Well, maybe not. Now that we could combine aqua spells with rotten bog, a lot of new possibilities will likely open up.
“Basically we have to use these traps so that they don’t catch up to us. Actually fighting any guardians will be a last resort only”
“Right, sounds like a plan”
“We don’t want to fight them if we don’t have to either”
“Great, so we’ll go back to our magic practice then”
“The h.e.l.l, you weren’t gonna help after all”
Yamada complained, but left it at that.
“Now, back to work everyone, no time like the present”
Looking at their parting backs, I felt a momentary pang of guilt. These guys were working so hard because their goal was to save Reina. I’m quite the villain I guess. I was using their good intentions not only to put them through harsh labor, but even have them fight life and limb for my own cause. Was I really so different from Higuchi who used violence to keep Masaru as his slave?
But I couldn’t let this bother me, I couldn’t let it loosen my resolve.
If I wasn’t making the plan, maybe they’d have made their own rescue mission. Who knows, they could’ve tried to simply ‘talk’ with Reina, which was less a plan and more an unintentional suicide.
A shaman absolutely needed friends if he wanted to survive the dungeon. And honestly, we’ve been through a lot together now, I couldn’t deny at least feeling a reluctance to let them die.
So both logically and feelings-wise, I can’t let them die here. I won’t let anyone else die, especially because of a b.i.t.c.h like Reina.
“I will, get my revenge soon”
My flames of vengeance were still burning high. But somewhere within that intense hate also lay the deep sorrow of losing an important friend.
