The Witch of Feathers (1)
Boom!
Sand erupted like a tidal wave, swept up by the oncoming storm.
Amidst the blinding flames and swirling grains of sand, Sienna could see dozens of small lead bullets scattering through the air.
She reached out desperately, chanting a spell.
“Nox, Pellerem…!”
Crash—!
In an instant, a protective barrier formed, deflecting the bullets with sparks flying.
But it wasn’t enough to stop them all. Several special forces agents beside her were hit by bullets that bypassed the shield and fell to the ground.
“Gah…!”
“Aaah! Nooo!”
A man clutched his bleeding throat, gasping for air, while a woman beside him tried to gather her spilled intestines.
Cloth was torn to shreds by shrapnel, bodies crushed by the blast, and flesh seared by flames.
Amidst the deliberately planted explosive traps, humans were nothing more than mere meat.
“Ma’am! You need to retreat… retreat… ugh!”
Boom!
The leader of the advance team, who had been crawling towards her, was caught in an explosion and blown away.
The blast that struck his side split his body cleanly in two.
Or more accurately, into two pieces and hundreds of fragments.
Under the rain of falling entrails and blood, Sienna bit her lip hard.
“Damn it. We didn’t anticipate an ambush.”
The advance team’s operation had been going smoothly. Just yesterday, everything seemed under control.
The rebel forces were scattered into ten separate groups, each wary of the other, wasting their strength and moving slowly without professional guides.
In contrast, the advance team had Sienna, an exceptional tracker and guide, and forty highly adaptable special forces agents.
The difference in combat power was significant.
Even without considering her bloodline powers, Sienna was a skilled sorceress. The agents were armed with the latest firearms and exceptional marksmanship.
With such a numerical advantage, the rebel groups, barely numbering ten, were no match.
The advance team had taken down one group on the first floor of the labyrinth and two more on the second.
They even thought the mission might be completed before the main force arrived.
“To think they’d regroup and launch a counterattack. We didn’t see it coming.”
Perhaps the internal strife wasn’t as deep as it seemed. Or maybe they were so cornered that even deep divisions didn’t matter.
The rebels had gathered five of their remaining seven groups and ambushed the advancing team in a vast sand pit.
Explosives were planted throughout the pit, and snipers on the surrounding hills timed their shots with precision.
Determined to end it here, the rebels had buried explosives so densely that the blasts seemed endless.
Boom! Boom…
Around the pit, a chain reaction of sand, flames, and shrapnel unfolded.
Once again, Sienna barely managed to reinforce her protective barrier, frowning deeply.
Perhaps aware of her presence as a capable sorceress, the rebels deliberately spread out the explosions.
Boom! Boom—
The irregular yet continuous explosions were relentless.
If they all went off at once, she might have been able to block them, but this way, it was only a matter of time before her stamina and concentration faltered.
“Unlike spells, there’s no warning with these explosive devices…”
A mere flick of a finger on a detonator could unleash an explosion as powerful as any strong magic.
No intense will or clear intent, just mechanical action.
Sienna, who had seen the one-eyed master craftsman, Bjorn Kaladrakum, at work, knew this well.
“If only I could take out the one with the detonator…”
The problem was the dozens of enemies hidden on the hills.
Unless one possessed superhuman senses, there was no way to identify who held the detonator.
Naturally, her options were limited.
All she could do was protect the agents with her barrier and occasionally retaliate with crossbow bolts or shock spells.
Even she was struggling, and the agents had no choice but to endure helplessly.
Already, the number of agents felled by explosions and shrapnel was in the double digits, with about half unable to rise, dead or alive.
“If only the witch’s power was intact, I wouldn’t have to worry about this…”
With a few lines of incantation, she could have easily turned the tide, wiping out the rebels with a flick of her hand.
At least she had learned some tricks from back-alley sorcerers in her youth, allowing her to maintain the barrier…
Boom—!
Her thoughts were interrupted by a deafening explosion. Her reflexive barrier spell was incomplete.
The flames and blast from the explosion right in front of her were deflected, but it wasn’t enough to block all the shrapnel.
Metal shards pierced through the barrier, grazing her shoulder, shin, and waist.
“Ugh…”
A sharp pain surged through her, nausea rising in her throat.
Clutching her throbbing shoulder, Sienna flattened herself against the ground.
A high-pitched ringing filled her ears, as if it had seeped into her skull. The flashes left afterimages that obscured her vision.
Grasping the gritty sand with her fingers, Sienna muttered through blood-flecked lips.
“I can’t… end like this…”
Above her desperate, dark eyes, ominous magic flickered.
A faint, feather-like shape fluttered, surrounded by the shadow of cold chains.
She couldn’t die so meaninglessly.
She had fought tooth and nail to survive, with dreams still unfulfilled.
Even if she had to start from scratch as a demon’s plaything, she refused to end it like this…
Then, something sliced through her senses.
A faint line.
It appeared out of nowhere, as if cutting through the fabric of space.
There was no overwhelming magic, but the subtle mystery stirred something within her.
A mystery she could sense because she was a witch, not just a sorceress.
Whoosh—!
The mysterious line ended at the enemy’s ambush site on the hill.
“Gah…!”
With a short, dying gasp, something rolled down from the hill into the pit.
Coincidentally, it landed right in front of Sienna.
Through the dust cloud, she saw the body of a spellcaster with an axe embedded in his forehead.
”…Huh?”
Sienna tilted her head at the sight of the metal rod that fell from his hand.
It looked eerily similar to the detonator the one-eyed master craftsman had been tinkering with.
Her gaze naturally shifted to the axe lodged in the man’s head.
“Dale…?”
The moment she recognized the emblem of the Holy Knights on the axe handle, a warrior’s name flashed in her mind.
Boom—!
Part of the pit’s surrounding walls vanished, and a massive, ochre-colored pillar rose in its place.
[Roar!]
The predator’s cry shook the area.
Everyone stared in awe at the source of the roar.
Scales harder than steel. A body as thick as the pillars of the Pantheon.
Its ten-layered maw rotated, grinding stone and sand with thousands of teeth.
Even if all the remaining explosives in the pit were detonated, could they bring it down?
In front of the countless eyes covering its maw, both special forces and rebels stood frozen, trembling.
Status and allegiance were meaningless. Before this colossal predator, humans were mere prey, insignificant creatures.
Clatter…
At that moment, part of the monster’s scales opened.
From within emerged dozens of gun barrels. Two or three per scale, totaling sixty gleaming barrels.
One of the rebel commanders wore a dumbfounded expression. His mouth opened slowly.
”…Huh?”
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
There was no answer to his question. Instead, a hail of bullets shattered his face.
Nearly half of the rebels surrounding the pit fell to the synchronized gunfire from the special forces agents emerging from the sandworm’s scales.
[Roar!]
The surviving half fainted and collapsed under the piercing screams of the thousands of gleaming eyes.
In an instant, the situation was reversed. Sienna struggled to comprehend what was happening.
Partly due to the blood she had lost, but also because the scene before her defied all her understanding.
And then.
Thud.
A warrior leaped from the top of the massive creature, landing on the sandy slope.
“Ha.”
The moment she saw him, all her questions melted away like snow in the desert.
“Sorry I’m late.”
The man spoke. Sienna couldn’t respond.
A mercenary who appeared out of nowhere. A fake Northerner with no lineage or family.
A peculiar warrior who cared for even the lowest of the low. Her client, who had stirred the labyrinth city within months of his arrival.
And the strangely cheerful, stoic man to whom she owed a considerable debt.
“It’s been a while.”
Dalen said.
He yanked the axe from the spellcaster’s head, gave it a quick wipe, and tucked it back into his belt.
With a swift motion, he snapped the wires connected to the trigger mechanism and brushed his hands off on his clothes. Then, he extended his hand.
His eyes were calm, but a light smile played on his lips.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
This time, Sienna could respond. She clasped the warrior’s bear-like hand.
As he helped her to her feet, a gentle smile, much like his own, spread across her face.
Dalen and the main force’s support had been impeccable.
Had they been even a moment later, the advance party might have been wiped out.
The rebel forces, numbering over fifty trained marksmen, had unleashed most of their gunpowder in a single assault.
Even for the elite agents of the Tsar’s special forces, such a fierce ambush was no easy feat to overcome.
But Dalen knew.
Even if the advance party had been pushed to the brink by the attack, the outcome would have been the rebels’ annihilation, not theirs.
For Sienna, the Feathered Witch and the Raven’s Nest’s informant, her own life was the most precious thing.
If her life were truly in danger, she would have unleashed her sealed powers, even at the cost of her future.
And before she could make such a decision, the true form of a certain bartender, currently polishing glasses somewhere, would have crossed space to save her.
Naturally, Dalen was here to prevent that scenario.
In that sense, his timing had been precariously close.
“Take today to rest. Tomorrow, the special forces will descend to the third level.”
Sasha Taran, the executor, declared quietly.
Inside the large tent used as a meeting room, reports of the advance party’s losses and subsequent strategy adjustments had just been exchanged.
“Though we’ve suffered many casualties, the situation is urgent. If we delay even a day, a demon might be summoned.”
The tent fell into a heavy silence. Given that half of the advance party had perished, her decision was undoubtedly a bold one.
Yet, no one objected. Everyone present understood the gravity of the situation.
In the past few hours, the group had tended to the casualties of the advance party while extracting enemy strategies from prisoners captured under the sandworm’s sleep curse.
According to the prisoners, the advance party had dealt with three of the ten rebel groups.
Sensing the threat, the remaining seven consolidated their forces, splitting into two groups with distinct roles.
About fifty were tasked with ambushing the pursuing special forces, while the remaining twenty descended to the third level of the labyrinth to conduct a demon summoning ritual.
Those twenty had descended two days ago.
There was no time to waste.
“If there are no objections, we’ll proceed as planned. Dismissed.”
Sasha said. The commanders returned to their respective tents.
Dalen also returned to his tent. He wiped himself down with a damp cloth and lay on his blanket.
Just as he was about to close his eyes, he heard someone clear their throat outside. Without moving, he spoke up.
“Get some rest. Just because you’ve been healed with potions doesn’t mean you should be up and about.”
“I know. I will.”
The tent flap opened slightly, and a head of black hair peeked in.
Sienna, peering through the gap, saw Dalen lying half-dressed on his blanket and asked,
“Could we take a walk for a bit?”