Chapter 418: Finish the Fighting
Translator: TransN Editor: TransN
They had been on the ridge for a week when Lightning detected the platoon at the north gate of Fallen Dragon Ridge.
As Nightingale had expected, the church's emissary delegation was composed of 25 fully armored Judgement Warriors, who were riding stallions at the head of the platoon. There was a transport corps of around 100 mercenary fighters and believers walking behind the Judgement Army.
Among them, there were two coaches. She assumed the Saint was in one of them.
The five witches secretly followed the platoon, as it headed toward Redwater City.
According to the plan, they would initiate the attack when the platoon was out of the monitoring area and thus would be unable to call for backup quickly.
Nightingale quietly watched a coach in the platoon from her mist and vaguely saw a silver light of magic power coming out through the distorted silhouette of the carriage.
If Nightingale acted alone, she could probably kill the Saint of the church, but it was not guaranteed that she could kill all of the enemies here. But now, with the help of the witches from Sleeping Island, it was highly possible that they would be able to block the news in the Southern Territory.
Once this platoon was eliminated, Hermes would not know anything, at least until next spring. And by then it would be very difficult for them to investigate what had happened to the emissary delegation.
Nightingale did not like killing, but this time it was an intentional decision.
It would lighten the burden on His Highness and help to defend the witches' Holy Mountain.
She would not regret it.
When the emissary delegation entered the forest, Nightingale saw a dark shadow coming close.
It was Maggie. She folded her wings and swooped down, roaring. Horses suddenly neighed in fright and went off uncontrollably. All the people were shocked, dumbfounded and only stared goggle-eyed at the scene.
But the giant beast did not burst into the crowd to bite and stomp on them as they had expected. Instead, it spread its wings just over their heads and flew away close to the ground, leaving a storm behind it. The strong wind made it hard for them to open their eyes. Suddenly, a person jumped off the beast's back and landed on the ground.
"Enemy attack!" the Judgement Warriors shouted among the emissary delegation.
Hearing this, the believers began to recover themselves, drew out their weapons and struck at the unknown enemy at the center of the platoon.
Nightingale's vision filled with black and white lines. They were fully covered with lightless black holes which could protect them from ordinary witches, but not from Ashes the Extraordinary.
She cut all the believers within her range in two, at their waists, like reaping wheat. All the people around her fell swiftly. She used an ordinary iron sword instead of her symbolic heavy sword, in order for Maggie to carry one more witch besides herself. The iron sword quickly cracked and broke during the fight. She seized the weapons dropped by the enemy, a halberd, a stick, sometimes an iron hammer or a cutlass. Anything in her hand became a lethal weapon.
Blood splashed and bodies were torn apart. In the middle of the platoon, Ashes cut them in two all by herself.
In the rear part of the platoon, the mercenary fighters could hardly offer the middle section any help because they had their own difficulties.
Andrea kept skipping through the forest like a fairy. She used the branches and trunks of the trees to cover herself and shoot arrows every time she changed position. Every one of her arrows would hit someone between his eyebrows and every one of her shots was to kill.
In less than ten minutes, the whole platoon was a mess. Screams, cries and fighting noises resounded in the forest.
Nightingale joined the fight immediately. She dashed through her mist, closely following her target, whowas her only target in this fight, the Saint of the church and the witch hunter. The coaches were drawn by the frightened horses. They ran wildly for a long way before the horses finally calmed down, but then they did not return to the platoon. Instead, they left the main road and burrowed into the forest in two different directions.
It seemed that the Saint had already noticed that among her enemies there was a tough opponent, an Extraordinary. For most witches, an Extraordinary with God's Stone of Retaliation was unbeatable.
Unfortunately, she could not escape from Nightingale's control.
Nightingale had already spotted her position earlier on. The one in the other coach was likely a high-ranking priestess or priest.
Nightingale left it to Lightning and Maggie.
Despite the fact that the Saint's coach tossed heavily on the bumpy road in the forest, the coachman kept whipping the horses, looking like he was urged by someone to speed up.
Nightingale approached. In order to shoot fatally every time, she only fired when she was less than ten meters behind the target and in line with it. She aimed at the four Judgement Warriors following the coach and pressed the trigger to kill them one by one. The Judgement Army immediately split off at the sound of the gun, but the distance now was still only several steps for Nightingale in her mist. Further, their full armors were doing more harm than good in a fight against large caliber bullets. The bullets became more harmful to the human body after going through these deformed, cracked armors.
After getting rid of the four Judgement Warriors, she pointed her gun at the horses.
As the two horses fell down, the fragile wooden carriage promptly flew off from the force. It then hit a tree trunk and immediately fell apart.
Through the flying pieces, a person wrapped in silver light rolled out. Nightingale aimed and shot without hesitation, but the light formed by magic power seemed to have consciousness and blocked the bullets one by one.
She moved away to reload a new cartridge.
"Traitor!" the Saint shouted angrily, charging towards where Nightingale hid.
This time, the situation was different.
They did not fight in a small room anymore. Now every step Nightingale took would cost the Saint more than ten steps to catch up and the effective range of a revolver which was around 50 meters was much bigger than the area a witch could affect with her ability. The Saint's "silver whip" could hardly reach Nightingale while a bullet could put the Saint to death anytime.
At this distance, merely one or two out of five shots could hit the target, but luckily Nightingale had enough time to reload new cartridges and keep aiming and firing.
After five catridges, the silver light dimmed out. One shot hit the Saint's left shoulder and another went through her stomach. She could no longer stand. She staggered a few steps, and then fell to the ground.
Nightingale was not in a hurry to approach her. She went back to the place where the carriage had fallen apart to pick up a God's Stone of Retaliation before she walked to the Saint. During the fight, she had kept moving around the carriage so it would be easier to search the site afterwards.
The moment Nightingale appeared beside the blood-covered witch, she suddenly stretched out her right hand, the only part she could move now, only to find that her silver light could not pierce her enemy as she wanted.
"You damned demon, the gods will put you on trial!" she said, gritting her teeth, blood was spewing out of her mouth.
Nightingale pointed the gun at her chest expressionlessly and replied, "Really? I'll wait for that day."
Then she pressed down the trigger.