Chapter 69: The Blade of Cangwu
Pitter-patter…!
As her vision cleared, she realized she was still located within that village of thatched cottages.
Moreover, even before reaching the edge of the village, she could hear a massive commotion coming from the distance, resembling rolling thunder faintly accompanied by tremors in the ground.
"Such an exaggeration?!" Wakaba widened her eyes.
This ruckus was practically on par with the time she raided Ansen Pharmaceuticals.
She sneaked toward that direction, the fine rain quickly soaking her clothes, a stray lock of short hair clinging to her forehead.
Along the way, she had already noticed dense, chaotic, and complex footprints on the ground, though they were already filled with turbid rainwater.
Boom!
Just as she approached the entrance of the village, she heard a tremendous roar erupting.
Furthermore, the explosive shockwave generated by this roar, transmitted from such a distance, was still capable of stirring up fierce gales.
Instead of taking the village dirt road, she scrambled up onto the side of a thatched roof, covered herself with the surrounding straw, and looked ahead.
What met her eyes was once again that expanse of paddy fields, littered with explosive craters, the smallest of which had a diameter of about one meter.
The water level in the paddies had noticeably dropped, revealing thick beds of mud in some areas.
The ridges between the fields had also been blown apart into several segments, and the water from both sides had pooled together.
Aside from that, there were shockingly gruesome severed limbs and arms—corpses of magical girls, internal organs, pools of blood, and so on.
A small fraction of these magical girls wore the same fluffy short skirts as those outside, while the majority of the rest wore entirely different attire.
As for the mountain forest on the other side of the paddy fields, large swaths of crisscrossing gullies and deep crevices had been plowed into it. Shattered blackened trees and a mess of broken branches and leaves extended as far as a thousand meters away into the distance.
From afar, Wakaba caught sight of the intense battle raging across that ruined mountain forest.
The combat zone spanned several hundred meters wide, and the magical girls involved were divided into two groups.
One group consisted of magical girls wearing fluffy short skirts, identical to the two from earlier.
They formed a huge encirclement with a diameter of over three hundred meters, trapping a Tainted Beast in the middle.
Instead of using magic to fight, each of them carried a 2.5-meter-long SPG-A spear-launching cannon.
The caliber of those barrels far exceeded that of sniper rifles; in Wakaba's eyes, it was clearly as if the artillery of infantry fighting vehicles had been dismantled and strapped onto the shoulders of magical girls.
They had a clear division of labor: one magical girl carried the cannon while another was responsible for loading the shells.
Inside the encirclement, apart from the Tainted Beast, there were also a dozen or so magical girls in varied attire.
They were engaged in a fierce battle with the Tainted Beast… No, it was merely being unilaterally slaughtered.
Swoosh!
Wakaba happened to witness it: the two-meter-tall humanoid Tainted Beast flickered at high speed, passing by a magical girl like a ghost. Without even being able to see how it swung its blade, that magical girl was sliced into several pieces.
At that exact moment, the magical girls on the outer ring carrying the SPG-A spear-launching cannons seized the opportunity to shell the area.
The immense recoil generated by the bombardment shattered the raindrops within a meter around the magical girls into a sheet of white mist, kicking up mud and leaves half a meter high from beneath their feet.
The whistling artillery shells pierced through everything along their path like sharp spears, forcefully plowing a white trench straight through the continuous curtain of rain.
And a single volley of such artillery fire consisted of sixty to seventy rounds.
Boom, boom, boom…!
In that split second, that location was swallowed by explosions, and the terrifying shockwaves of the blasts spread outward in concentric circles, tearing the fine rain into mist before it could even fall.
Hiding a thousand meters away, Wakaba could still feel a dull ache in her eardrums.
"What kind of faction is this? Not only can they organize a full hundred magical girls, but they also possess such heavy weaponry!"
She finally understood how those huge craters had been formed.
Those shoulder-mounted cannons were clearly heavy weapons meant to be used in conjunction with powered armor.
However, the magical girls possessed immense physical strength of their own and could operate these cannons without needing powered armor.
She could see that magical girls equipped with such firepower were essentially highly agile, light armored tanks.
A thousand meters away.
As a round of bombardment ended, the magical girls in the back quickly began reloading their shells, well-trained and disciplined.
At the shelled location, the smoke cleared, revealing a crater about five meters in diameter.
The crater was a patch of scorched earth billowing with heat, where soil and wood chips were indistinguishably mixed, and the corpse of that magical girl was nowhere to be found.
Facing such an attack, although the Tainted Beast had dodged most of it by relying on its extreme speed, it still suffered considerable impact, its sprinting figure stalling toward the side for a fraction of a second.
Swish!
The moment it landed, it once again turned into a ghost, flashing toward the nearest magical girl.
As for the injuries sustained from the explosive shockwave, though not obvious, one could sense that its speed had slowed down slightly.
Its form resembled a red dashed line amidst the rain curtain.
Before that magical girl could react, she was cut in half at the waist, her upper body sent flying, intestines and internal organs spilling out…
And the artillery barrage arrived right on schedule!
Boom, boom, boom…!
Violent explosions engulfed the place.
The next instant, the Tainted Beast reappeared ten meters off to the side.
Half of one of its arms had actually been blown off, hanging on only by a shred of skin and flesh.
This sight greatly encouraged the outer ring of magical girls, who all wore delighted expressions as they hurriedly reloaded their shells and took aim…
The Tainted Beast within the encirclement, seemingly devoid of pain, flickered and lunged toward the nearest magical girl.
These magical girls were completely unable to resist, turning to flee; those who ran slowly died, while those who ran fast died later.
Naturally, the direction they fled was toward the mountain forest, as doing so bought them a little more time to live.
This was also the reason why the battlefield shifted from the fields below the mountain to the mountain forest.
The Tainted Beast pursued them relentlessly, continuously executing those magical girls who lagged behind.
The outer ring of magical girls also moved along with the Tainted Beast to ensure it remained trapped in the center of the encirclement, continuously shelling it to wear it down…
Wakaba, watching from afar, began to grasp their combat strategy.
They were completely unable to track the movements of the Tainted Beast.
However, they did not need to track the Tainted Beast's movements at all.
They only needed to attack the magical girl closest to the Tainted Beast.
In other words, those magical girls trapped within the encirclement were nothing more than bait.
"No wonder those two magical girls outside gave me such strange looks earlier~~"
"So this 'Blade of Awu' faction is actually coercing other magical girls to serve as cannon fodder!"
However, she quickly realized that while their approach was effective, it was only temporary.
"Those cannon fodder magical girls are clearly not enough. Once they are all used up, the so-called encirclement will become a complete joke," Wakaba thought to herself.
Their tactic seemed clever, but it merely exploited the fact that the Tainted Beast lacked intelligence and would only attack the nearest magical girl.
If she were the Tainted Beast, she would have already relied on that terrifying speed of over a hundred meters per second to directly massacre the artillery positions of the outer ring.
Not only had she figured it out, but the leader of the Blade of Awu had also realized it.
At this moment, on the northern side of the encirclement, several girls dressed in apron maid outfits exuded powerful auras while holding umbrellas while bowing.
They were shielding a woman in the middle from the rain.
The woman appeared to be around seventeen or eighteen years old, sitting on a chair.
She wore a white shirt and high-waisted trousers, which outlined a tall but not particularly curvaceous figure.
Her facial features, in particular, were extremely spirited. A pair of sword-like brows sat straight and resolute, and her gaze was as sharp as a blade, seeming capable of cutting through any obstacle in her path.
"Young Master, I'm afraid that even once those baits are exhausted, we still won't be able to eliminate this semi-mature Tainted Beast…" a maid by the spirited woman's side said worriedly.
Even though her master was a woman, she addressed her as Young Master.
"Aren't you all still here?" Awu Jizhao glanced at the maid.
The maid immediately dropped to her knees in the mud, her voice calm and firm: "As a retainer of the Awu family, this humble servant is willing to offer everything for the Young Master."
"Get up," Awu Jizhao said indifferently.
Her gaze pierced through the rain curtain toward the village at the foot of the mountain: "Besides, another little mouse has arrived over there. Let's use her as bait right away."