Chapter 2:
The Trump Card
IT TOOK A FULL DAY for the Fighting God to appear. We had Atofe and the others to thank for that; they’d held him back. But they hadn’t come back. I doubted an immortal demon could die that easily, but Atofe must have taken enough damage to prevent her from pursuing the Fighting God. All the same, thanks to their sacrifice, we were fully prepared.
The Fighting God came directly. He didn’t try to hide or to rush. He just strolled on in, Geese on his shoulder, as if to declare nothing could stop him.
✦ ✦ ✦
We commenced hostilities near the entrance to the forest. I stood on top of a towering wall, about ten meters high and two kilometers long, that I’d built to protect the forest. From up there, I rained magic down on what lay below—Stone Cannons, specifically. I wanted to at least knock Geese down, so I fired off as many shots as I could. The Eye of Distant Sight didn’t work against Badigadi. Orsted said even he didn’t know why, but it was probably safe to assume Badigadi was a Blessed Child with that power, or else that he’d done something in the past that had given him resistance to Demon Eyes.
He was far away, but you couldn’t miss the gold, and I’d been practicing Stone Cannon ever since I was born into this world. My hits were landing. For every ten shots I fired, one hit. Only, even at this distance, I could tell they weren’t doing much damage. When I got a direct hit, a hole opened in the gold armor, but it repaired itself straight away. I wasn’t piercing it, and I wasn’t slowing him down. The Fighting God walked towards us without even bothering to defend himself. My firepower must have been weakened by the distance. I had no choice but to hit him at point-blank range if I wanted to really get to him.
Oh, and I got one hit on Geese. It was hard to tell from this far away, but at the moment of impact he’d fallen off Badigadi’s shoulder. Seemed conclusive. Although, right after that he got back up like nothing had happened, so I’d apparently done almost no damage. He did move to stand behind Badigadi rather than get back up on his shoulder, like I’d woken him up, at least. A hit at closer range might have done enough damage to insta-kill him, but given I hadn’t taken him out with the lightning, it seemed safe to assume that Geese had given himself some sort of magical resistance.
In the end, I couldn’t manage anything close to slowing them down. Once the Fighting God got close enough, I used fire magic to burn the outer wall, then retreated into the forest. I wasn’t about to get any closer than I had to.
As I confirmed that the wall had been destroyed, I said to myself, “All according to plan. We’ve got this. We’ll be okay…”
Yup. I knew this was how things would go. There was no way this’d be enough to stop them.
When the Fighting God entered the trees, I cast a wide-area Deep Mist to cover the entire forest, then I added a Quagmire of the same size. Reconnaissance and guerrilla tactics I’d leave to Ruijerd and the Superd warriors. My Demon Eyes didn’t work, but Ruijerd and the other Superd’s eyes were definitely trained on the Fighting God.
It worked. A report came that thanks to the Superd’s tactics combined with the Deep Mist, the Fighting God had become lost and spent several hours stumbling around in the fog. Hoping that he’d get so lost he ended up back at the edge of the forest again, I continued to cast Dense Mist and Quagmire over the whole area.
Then, after a few hours, Ruijerd came with a report. “The Fighting God has settled on his direction of advance.” He was heading straight for the Ravine of the Earthwyrm. I bet that was Geese. Badigadi alone would’ve been one thing, but Geese seemed like the sort to know how to find his way in a forest under Dense Mist. I questioned whether pure know-how would be enough to actually do it, but it wasn’t hard to imagine he’d used some sort of magical implement or magic item. Although if he’d had a magic implement, they wouldn’t have wandered for hours in the first place. He probably took time and used old-school methods to determine their position and direction. Geese could probably manage that.
So with Deep Mist, Quagmire, and the Superd’s guerilla tactics, we’d managed to slow them down for a measly three hours. Three of our fighters were dead. The Fighting God had taken out the Superd warriors who had gotten too close to him, but their deaths weren’t in vain. They’d stopped him long enough for the sun to set. When that happened, the Fighting God stopped moving. He wasn’t solar-powered or anything, but he ceased activity at night even so.
Not me, though. I didn’t let up with Dense Mist or Quagmire, and the Superd never paused their campaign. I carried out long-range attacks with Blast Cannon. I wasn’t hoping to do any damage. The point was not to let them sleep, not to let them rest. It might not have much effect on Badigadi, but it would affect Geese.
The first day ended.