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He predicted the executor in front would dodge by a hair, and used that blind spot to snipe the last executor.
It was because from the start, he’d been seeing behind him with
‘…I didn’t even know I could use it like this.’
In return, Solomon too had his position pinpointed and revealed himself.
Even the coat torn by the Alfheim Typewriter and the shirt soaked in blood showed he had taken more than a few hits.
“So what?”
The executor in front did not care.
“Our situation won’t change.”
“Is that so?”
“And besides, I….”
No, he was trying hard not to care.
“I-I knew that much from the beginning!”
“…….”
With that, tree roots that had burst through the slate floor began to writhe like living tentacles.
Elven earth magic.
Solomon didn’t panic.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Magic for magic.
‘
Along with the drained weakness of something ebbing out of his chest like a receding tide, a darkness deeper than night fell over the rooftop.
───「Veil of Darkness」Tag — Level 2 spell, Shadow attribute, Enhanced Attunement (Lord of the Veil)
: Unfurls a veil of darkness, treating all of the caster’s attacks within the area as Ambush: Within the veil, the caster’s Defense and Evasion increase, while the enemy’s Accuracy decreases
On top of the spell’s own power, the enhanced effect of the Bale family’s innate bloodline trait
And that wasn’t all.
───Trait 「Master of Ambush」: On a successful melee ambush, add Damage 6───
Any melee attack delivered inside this veil would apply that 「Master of Ambush」 trait.
That executor too, inside the darkness, aimed the Alfheim Typewriter without hesitation, exactly at Solomon.
‘The opponent’s attacks take an Accuracy reduction penalty.’
Even so, how it would apply to a dark elf with innate darkvision was unknown.
Tudududu!
When he pulled the trigger, fragments of fire spirits began to fire at a rate of hundreds per minute.
‘No, then what’s the point…!’
It didn’t seem like he could dodge pseudo-bullets pouring in by the hundreds per minute with mere movement.
Fortunately in his misfortune, there were plenty of places to take cover.
Even then, the Alfheim Typewriter’s muzzle didn’t stop.
Even the scattered fragments of the fire spirits remnants illuminated the darkness itself, magic-infused and all.
It was literally as if the power of light was sweeping away the Veil of Darkness.
“Oh, forgive me, O goddess of the moon!”
Now he wasn’t even trying to aim at Solomon, just spraying the Alfheim Typewriter in all directions.
“This is the power of light, you damn spawn of darkness!!”
Along with lines you could not possibly associate with a dark elf.
‘That crazy bastard…!’
Little by little, and yet clearly, he could see the light sweeping the darkness away.
To the point he wondered if the veil itself might actually vanish.
‘I need to stop that bullshit first.’
From cover, Solomon carefully readjusted his grip on the Nightfall crossbow.
It wasn’t just an automatic crossbow.
It was an automated crossbow that had received the Deadlock Workshop’s Type-A modification—Nightfall XR—10 (Mod).
The moment he gauged the executor’s position beyond the cover through
Leaving behind the small regret that it wasn’t a melee attack and wouldn’t benefit from 「Master of Ambush」.
“!”
When he belatedly noticed Solomon’s presence, the trigger had already been pulled.
And no sound came out.
Not even the automatic crossbow’s noise that should have been there.
Even the tearing air-splitting sound that should have rung out in flight was absent.
A snipe fired in silence from trigger pull to impact.
This was all thanks to the silence spell that was newly imbued during the modification.
In Guild City, where there were plenty strong enough to notice and dodge an attack just by hearing the tearing sound, the meaning of that was never a small thing.
Because the dark elf in front had been exactly that.
So one of their racial strengths, detection that relied on acute hearing, effectively became useless.
The soundless bolt grazed past him, barely missing his body.
That was enough. The sound that should have existed didn’t.
“You bastard, don’t tell me you did a silence mod…!”
While he panicked, Solomon shifted position again and slipped out of his sight.
As expected, the Alfheim Typewriter’s muzzle, which was spraying wildly, fell silent.
Before long, the tree roots around him wrapped as if protecting him, just as Solomon predicted.
‘Even if you hide behind roots or structures, you can’t hide your position anyway.’
Because he could see through everything.
In that state, he cut between the rooftop structures, looping around to aim for the blind spot behind him.
His hand pulled the trigger at once. It was, of course, a soundless shot.
Within the silence, Solomon was tightening the opponent’s throat little by little, and surely.
Like a hunter unilaterally hunting prey.
The silence spell only applied to the automatic crossbow.
But there was no sound in Solomon’s movement and steps as he aimed for the executor’s back.
Elf ears, including dark elves, were extremely sensitive, to the point you could call them an organ for a new sense.
Like a bat’s ultrasound, it was a core sense for their race to communicate with the outside world, a detection ability worthy of being called a super-sense.
But—this crossbow’s sound could not be caught even with that elven hearing.
Even as several bolts were fired, even as positions changed again and again within the veil, even as countless actions took place, no sound was heard.
It was as if someone had pressed a mute button, the sounds that should exist did not.
And in that world of silence—for the first time, a sound rang out.
“Caw.”
A crow’s cry ringing out, breaking the silence.
“!”
At that moment, Solomon had already pulled the Nightfall crossbow’s trigger.
From the front of the executor, who had turned his head back to look at the crow—
“Keoheok!”
A sound followed. The sound of an Adam’s apple being pierced. A hit. It went straight into a vital point.
“Kuh, ggeuheok, kuh…! You lowly-race bas, tard…!”
Chiiik!
Along with it, corrosive poison liquid flowed from the crossbow’s end.
As the corrosive liquid poured down his throat, the executor suffered without even being able to scream.
Solomon didn’t miss that chance.
He rapidly closed the distance and pulled the Nightfall automatic crossbow’s trigger again.
—Not forgetting to push the multi-shot slider to the maximum beforehand.
Unlike before, sound rang out.
As he pulled the trigger, the automatic crossbow’s internal gears meshed and sprang into motion.
Cogwheels engaged, winding the string and drawing it taut, a metallic grind of friction and machinery.
The instant the alloy string’s tension reached its peak.
The sound of the lock releasing and the firing slide expelling the bolts into the outside world sounded.
Taang!
Nine bolts surged out and an air-tearing sound rang out.
The silence spell only blocked the sound for a single shot.
It wasn’t a simultaneous volley jamming in up to ten shots. There wasn’t even a need for that anymore.
‘I cut his breath for good.’
Excluding the first soundless bolt, the remaining nine fired at once. The cartridge emptied.
Solomon quickly swapped cartridges with a wrist snap and began pouring in the remaining bolts.
Once again, inside the cold machinery, countless sounds began to live and breathe.
Nine, ten, ten. Bolts poured out in multi-shots, as if to punch him full of hive holes.
“……!”
Before the hail of dozens of bolts, the tree roots around him belatedly wrapped as if protecting him.
‘I knew it.’
Right after, something astonishing happened.
The ten bolts fired in a burst saw the roots in their path and immediately curved.
Like guided missiles correcting their trajectory toward the target.
It wasn’t a metaphor. On top of the silence spell, another was etched in by the dwarven masters, an auto-guidance function.
‘It was a spell called something like Tracker’s Mark.’
With his throat pierced and corrosive fluid pouring in, a total of thirty bolts rained through the roots wrapped around the elven executor, each with self-guiding flight.
“Kk, ggeuuuk…!”
Unable to dodge, the things he was holding fell to the floor.
One was the Alfheim Typewriter.
The other was a glass bottle filled with red liquid.
With his throat punched open and corrosive poison spreading, he had been turned into a beehive by the dozens of bolts.
Even with wounds severe enough that instant death would not have been surprising, the dark elf executor was still moving.
With movements so desperate they were almost severed, he writhed toward the glass vial lying on the floor.
‘A healing potion!’
And there was a green light flickering across his body. It looked like elven regeneration magic.
Each time the corrosive liquid washed over and ate away at him, wounds could be seen rapidly regenerating in bursts of green light.
‘He can hold on even after taking that much…?’
A tenacity that refused to die no matter what. So stubborn it was downright vicious.
Solomon clicked his tongue.
If he could endure even now, there was no telling what would happen if he drank a healing potion too.
So Solomon didn’t hesitate either.
—The distance closed completely.
The veil had not vanished yet.
By the rules, ‘all attacks’ inside the veil were treated as an ambush.
And from now on, every melee ambush Solomon performed would add 6 damage without question.
It was the same as definitively adding six die faces.
The unseen dice, numbers, attack power, that intangible current was no longer something like a ‘hand pushing his back.’
A small wind had become a gale, and the gale was turning into a vortex.
Puuk!
The force added to the tip of his blade was closer to dynamite exploding, or the compressed air of a slaughter air gun driving a bolt.
[Without even needing to wait for dawn, the elf killer has felled the three goddesses of vengeance chasing after him, and overcame the curse of the three sisters…]
At that moment, as if it had been waiting, the narrator’s voice was heard.
[It’s not often you get the chance to kill as many as three goddesses of vengeance. In that valuable experience, the elf killer realizes his level has risen. Wow, it’s Level 4.]
He knew it already. That this was nothing more than the formal procedure and ritual they talked about so incessantly.
‘With this, I’m at Level 4.’
Solomon clenched his fist without a word.
Then he picked up the Alfheim Typewriter and the healing potion lying at the executor’s feet.
‘It should be fine to take this much.’
After checking whether the other executors were truly dead, Solomon immediately opened the healing potion’s cap.
“Hoo….”
He leaned against the duct again and took in the healing potion’s effect seeping into his body.
The wounds didn’t suddenly pop away like magic.
Even so, the wounds visibly closed, beginning to regenerate rapidly as if accelerating at a clock’s hands.
As if compressing weeks and months of recovery into an instant.
When the effect ended, small scars had already remained where wounds should have been.
In the end, it was no different from magic.
‘With this, I’ve got one Level 1 spell slot left, and even the 「Blade in the Dark」 trait is still intact.’
───Available spell slots: Level 1 spell slots, 1 use (⚀■■■): Level 2 spell slots, 0 uses (■)───
───「Blade in the Dark」: Once per day, you can trigger a guaranteed melee critical hit.───
The more cards you have saved up, the better. You never knew what could happen until you fell asleep.
Leaning against the rooftop duct, Solomon looked up at the night sky.
He sent the last of the thirteen remaining Black Bird Spirits up into the air, not forgetting to keep watch.
Fortunately, the Black Bird Spirits themselves could be replenished with rest as long as the bracelet didn’t break, the same way as spell slots.
The night was deep, and dawn was still far away.
Even so, the contract ended here.
All that remained was to receive the payment he was due.
‘I need to crash fast and level up too.’
After a short rest, Solomon rose without delay.
He still had a long way ahead of him.
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