al_squad
patreon
Bermuda Chapter 106
🕑 Added 2024-05-18 11:09:08 +0000 UTCChapter 106
As the damp air turned cold and his airways opened up, Leonardo reflexively raised his head and looked upward.
Light seeped through the dust that filled the deep and rugged ravine, and the thick, massive ice surging from the cliffs on both sides sparkled with reflected light. The falling rocks and earth were caught on that grand ice roof, buying them some time.
The figure floating leisurely amidst the spectacle of the space between the cliffs filled with ice was obscured by the thick dust and backlighting, making it difficult to see the figure’s appearance properly.
"..."
But even without seeing, Leonardo could tell who he was at once.
"Commander!"
The 8th Platoon Leader shouted toward the sky in an unusually delighted voice. Then, the figure in the air seemed to turn this way. Confirming him, the 8th Platoon Leader immediately spoke to Leonardo, who was clinging to her feet.
"Blaine, now's the chance."
As she gestured with her chin as if telling him to climb up, Leonardo nodded his head without answering.
The 8th Platoon Leader stepped on the cliff she had been clinging to and leaped first through the dust. Leonardo also changed the position of his feet and twisted his body to follow her.
When he raised his head to look at her back as he was about to leap, Leonardo's eyes met the crimson gaze of the man being carried in the 8th Platoon Leader's arms.
Leonardo instinctively held his breath.
The man, who had clearly been unconscious until just now, was looking down at him with bulging eyes, veins popping out. As their eyes met, Leonardo stared at the man, frozen in place, then suddenly shifted his gaze to the man's glowing hand. The blue mineral held in that hand was emitting a faint light.
Leonardo's expression stiffened rapidly.
'He should have put everything in the bag, where did he get that from...'
The man looked at him and laughed with a grotesque expression.
Leonardo immediately pushed off the wall with his feet without even having time to think, getting as far away from the cliff as possible. Then, he threw the man's bag that he had been carrying on his left shoulder down the gorge. If the guy threw that thing this way, the other minerals in the bag would explode together, doubling the impact of the blast.
However, contrary to expectations, the man did not throw the mineral at Leonardo.
As Leonardo moved away, he grabbed the arm of the 8th Platoon Leader, who was holding him by the scruff of the neck, and snapped her wrist in an instant. In the moment the platoon leader, who had been caught off guard, let go of the man's collar, the blue mineral left the man's hand and flew straight toward her.
In that split second, seeing the glowing mineral, Leonardo reached out his hand toward the 8th Platoon Leader.
***
A loud noise spread through the air, and a strong gust of wind blew through the ravine. As the dust that had been gradually settling rose again in all directions due to the unusual scale of the explosion, Hugo, who had been preventing the collapse of the mountain by freezing the moisture absorbed in the soil from above, jumped into the cliff below without hesitation, unable to see an inch ahead.
Chunks of falling rock blocked his path as he descended faster than gravity, but he swung his huge greatsword and split the rock in two with a single strike. The rock, split with a cracking sound, collided with other falling rocks and stirred up dust.
As the swirling fragments annoyingly hindered him, Hugo turned his body and stretched out his arm toward the sky. Two white spheres appeared from his fingertips and rapidly shot forward, making a thunderous sound like an explosion, temporarily blowing away the dust obscuring his vision and the rocks falling from above.
However, the problem was that the water in the soil that had been frozen by his mana began to melt again at a fast pace as the supply of cold was cut off due to the peninsula's humid heat. Already seeing cracks forming in the ice above, Hugo changed direction again and hurriedly descended.
There wasn't much time.
Leonardo, who had strongly collided his back against the cliff due to the impact of the explosion, still held Kenis in his arms and caught the falling 8th Platoon Leader by throwing his body.
She was unconscious, and he was on the verge of having his consciousness swallowed by the tinnitus mixed with the sound of the explosion. Because of that, he lost his sense of direction and collided with rocks several times, realizing that he was falling together with them while holding onto Kenis and the 8th Platoon Leader.
He no longer had enough mana left to lift the weight of all three people. However, perhaps due to the aftereffects of being caught in the explosion, his mind was hazy even as he was falling.
The surrounding sounds were buzzing, and the tinnitus and auditory hallucinations pierced his head, dulling his sense of reality, and he was just blankly staring at the rocks rapidly approaching in front of his eyes.
At that moment, when Leonardo was barely holding onto a distant thread of consciousness, a voice penetrated through his awareness.
That voice, faintly heard amidst the mixed noise, was unclear yet familiar.
In his hazy consciousness, Leonardo was unknowingly drawn to that sound. Then, the distorted sound gradually became clearer and pierced his ears in an instant.
"Leonardo—!"
The moment he heard the voice echoing through the ravine, Leonardo suddenly felt his mind snap awake.
Twisting his body and narrowly avoiding a boulder that had come right in front of him, he raised his head toward the sky to look at the one who had called him.
Then, the massive rock that had been filling his vision was instantly split in half, and a man with blue eyes appeared through the gap, approaching solely toward him.
As their gazes met, perhaps due to the rapidly decreasing altitude, the ear pressure returned to normal, and the stuffiness in his ears cleared, and the wailing that had been lurking around disappeared as if washed away. His hazy mind was also pulled back to reality.
Leonardo immediately grabbed the belt straps of the two people he was holding with both hands, pulling them with all his might and grasping them with one hand. And with his other hand, he reached out to the man extending his hand toward him.
The two of them stretched out their arms toward each other almost simultaneously.
As they desperately wished for their fingertips to touch, the distance gradually grew closer. However, the rough wind blocked the two, making it feel terribly slow, contrary to their urgent hearts.
Hands that seemed to brush past each other wandered regrettably in the air, and the eyes that couldn't reach those hands clung to each other as if lamenting.
It was clearly an urgent situation, but at that moment, everything around them felt entirely slow.
That's when it happened.
A sharp fragment that had split off from colliding with another rock brushed past Hugo's arm.
Because of that, the distance between the two hands that had almost grabbed each other suddenly widened, and at the same time, red blood scattered in the air.
As fresh blood splattered on his face, the golden pupils momentarily wavered.
"Hugo!"
Leonardo called out his name without realizing it, his face turning pale.
Hugo, who had briefly moved away, descended again at a fast speed without showing any signs of pain, but the grazed wound was quite deep. Moreover, in that short moment, the distance between the two had widened absurdly, and even if Hugo accelerated his descent, the distance did not easily narrow because Leonardo was carrying two more people.
As dust and small rocks obscured his vision, making teleportation also impossible, Hugo generated a thin stream of water from his left hand to create a long whip. Then, he swung it in the direction where Leonardo was.
As the slender stream of water stretched out through the obstacles blocking his view and headed toward him, Leonardo instinctively grasped the end and wrapped it around his arm.
Confirming that the stream of water had tightened, Hugo immediately thrust his firmly gripped greatsword into the cliff to reduce the descent speed.
The friction between the greatsword and the cliff was directly transmitted to Hugo's arm due to the high speed, causing pain as if it would be torn off. Nevertheless, he only slightly frowned and, in the midst of it, firmly fixed the water stream wrapped around the hilt of the greatsword so as not to drop those who were holding onto it.
However, that impact was also applied to Leonardo's arm holding the end of the water stream. As extreme pain flowed through his arm, Leonardo squeezed his eyes shut. He wished for the sensation in his arm to be lost like this.
The greatsword stuck in the cliff continued to slide down due to the acceleration, and then it barely stopped, caught on the edge of a protruding rock.
And the moment the fall completely ceased, a slight rebound occurred.
Leonardo, who had been enduring the pain while hanging from the end of the water stream, felt his left arm, which was holding the belts of the two people, momentarily lighten right after the rebound.
As an ominous sensation crept up his arm, he stopped his roughly panting breath and immediately looked down.
"Ah—."
His pale complexion uttered a sigh filled with despair.
It was because he saw a figure growing distant into the darkness.
One of the two belt straps he had been holding onto had its connecting ring broken.
Kenis was still falling.
Comments
Jesse Gibson
Ah damn it
