Ch.1545-1+++

# 154. 5-1+++

“C-4.”

“A-2.”

“B-5.”

“C-1.”

BOOM- BOOM- BOOM- BOOM-

After the first explosion, the sound of mines packed with fire magic detonated one after another from all directions. Occasionally, screams mixed in between the explosions, but no one present seemed to care about that.

“[Seyeon. Three o’clock, two blocks.]”

“[Danya. Seven o’clock, three blocks.]”

“[Yuri. Nine o’clock, one and a half blocks.]”

“[Arang. Three o’clock, two blocks.]”

The four who had been luring prey into the trap now began the additional role of herding the panicked targets back together before rejoining the main force, preventing them from scattering in all directions.

Right now, we had the advantage after landing the first surprise blow, so those bastards were taking a one-sided beating. But rotten as they might be, they were still mages who would soon try to respond somehow.

The key to this operation was dragging them into a messy swamp.

Mines and claymores were highly effective weapons, but they had the disadvantage of becoming completely useless if the enemy didn’t enter the installation area…

“[Seyeon, disengage.]”

“C-3.”

BOOM-!

“[Seyeon, continue straight ahead.]”

“[Yuri, don’t chase too far. Stay at three o’clock, three blocks. No, two and a half blocks.]”

“B-4.”

BOOM-!

“A-3.”

BOOM-!

“[Danya, straight ahead.]”

“[Arang, retreat directly to six o’clock.]”

“B-1.”

BOOM-!

From a hideout on some building’s rooftop, I controlled our squad members like a player in a board game, detonating mines while those crazy mages gathered deeper inside, herded like mice chased by cats, following exactly where our squad members were driving them.

‘So far, so good.’

If things continue like this, soon… something big is coming.

**

BOOM-!

“AAAAARGH!”

After being chased for a while by various inflammatory rhetoric that made my blood boil just hearing it and holy light that triggered deep revulsion from the depths of my soul.

Perhaps due to orders from the Tower Lord and the elders, I could see colleagues who should have been elsewhere, each wearing expressions that suggested they’d explode if they couldn’t destroy something soon.

Yet no one said a word about it.

We all felt the same way.

When we meet them, we’ll burn off an arm or leg, and tear out those deceptive tongues by the roots and grind them to dust.

We didn’t even need the Tower Lord’s orders.

Demon Slayers?

I didn’t believe it. More precisely, it didn’t feel real.

Even before seeing them in person, just briefly hearing their voice made me feel a presence and pressure as if my entire soul was being bound. After encountering them in person, the very thought of resistance was erased, and I was completely captivated by their overwhelming presence and power.

And they not only withstood that but even defeated it?

Not the Royal Knights or the Magic Tower or ancient elves, but mere human adventurers?

Yet seeing how they returned to a city they had no connection with to interfere with our cause again, they seemed to burn with a petty sense of justice, though they were craftier and more skilled than expected.

Fine, I admit it.

If those bitches who deserve to be burned alive truly are the Demon Slayers, I’ll do everything in my power to eliminate them.

That’s what I had thought.

Until deafening explosions and flames hot enough to sear flesh kept pouring down right in front of me, beside me, where I had just passed, and even right above me.

“Such barbarism!”

“Master Brim! What should we—!”

“Stay calm! Are we mages or not?!”

It was impossible to stay calm.

Could mages who had spent half or almost their entire lives studying magic and truth in the narrow confines of a tower ever have imagined using magic like this?

Still, having realized that this was a trap set by those vicious women, and that the trap was made of ‘magic,’ we could devise countermeasures.

“Form pairs of two! One detects magical sources while the other deploys a protective barrier around your pair!”

We had already lost many to the rapidly striking explosive mines, but after that, the casualties noticeably decreased.

Those who didn’t want to throw their lives away for something like this stopped casting magic like madmen and gathered all their strength to deploy magical barriers…

“H-h-have you ever seen such crazy bitches…!”

How long had they been in the city, and how much time had they spent preparing!

The demon summoners couldn’t advance recklessly despite identifying the trap locations through the countless detected magical sources.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Seeing mages suffering from wounds after falling into purely mechanical traps with no magic while trying to detect magical sources, everyone was outraged.

If a sage had been present, they might have said, “Your madness is but a fake,” seeing how reason had returned to them.

Advancing would mean many deaths.

But retreating would mean losing their purpose entirely, and it was obvious those vicious women would use more tricks.

The highest-ranking mage among them, their group having grown considerably after being herded from various directions, gave an order.

“Move away from the expected blast radius, then bombard the detected magical sources with spells to destroy them.”

“Understood!”

“Such petty and cowardly methods, unworthy of Demon Slayers… we’ll bring it all crashing down!”

**

“Huh…? Why are they moving like that?”

After panicking and scattering in all directions, those bastards had gathered together after significant casualties and slowly advanced, but now they seemed to be giving up the ground they’d gained and pulling back.

I asked Subin, who was taking a brief rest and wiping away beads of sweat after the continuous remote detonation work.

“What do you think of this?”

“They wouldn’t retreat… Hmm.”

She frowned while watching the same scene from the same place as me, then snapped her fingers and turned to Sister Soyu.

“I think they’re planning to detonate the minefield from a distance.”

“Huh?”

Shit?

“Right. We should activate Plan B quickly, I think?”

“Sister! Sister Soyu!”

Having been so focused on directing from the front, I was a bit slow to grasp the situation. Looking again after hearing Subin’s words, I saw she was right.

I quickly called Sister Soyu and prepared for chain detonation rather than individual explosions as planned.

“Yes, Sunghyun?”

“Prepare Damnatio Memoriae. [Decoy team, Agitation team. Return to main force immediately. Return immediately.]”

That’s why we didn’t bother stopping their retreat and preparations. It was a bit earlier than expected, and they weren’t as gathered as we’d hoped, but it was still within acceptable parameters.

‘Right. They’re mages, so they’re trying to use their brains to break through.’

Mages who didn’t want to cross the dirty swamp, so they decided to overturn the swamp itself.

I observed the distance between the mages and the area where flames from fire elementals were buried, not just the regular fire magic mines, calculating the optimal timing.

“Oppa!”

“Nyaang!”

[Are you okay?]

“Captain!”

“Squad Leader Oppa!”

While I was measuring, the decoy and agitation teams who had worked so hard returned one after another. They had been running around so energetically that their hair was stuck to their faces with sweat.

Without taking my eyes off the mages, I patted their shoulders to comfort them for their hard work.

“Trap. Trap. Trap. They thought they escaped, but there was another trap. Now it’s time to watch the results of all our efforts together.”

“They’re playing this game like assholes, huh?”

“Actually, if we had to rate it, this is only about 30 to 40 points. No teabagging, after all.”

“To say there’s no teabagging… we did taunt them a lot. Do you know how scared I was when those old men with red faces were chasing us while casting bright red magic and yelling at the top of their lungs?”

“That was a scared expression…?”

“I admit it was thrilling.”

“Nyah, nyaht, nyanyanya!”

[They were just strong idiots! Well, not even as strong as us!]

I nodded at my companions’ war stories while glancing at Sister Soyu and Sister Yehyun, who were fully concentrated.

‘Just a little, just a little more…!’

Each time the traps we had painstakingly set were detonated one by one by the enemy rather than Subin, I wanted to give the order to Sister Soyu. My lips twitched, but even when Sister Soyu looked at me with eyes asking “not yet?”, I held back for the climax.

And finally.

When those crazy mages had destroyed about 60-70% of the DMZ and breached about half of it.

“Sister Soyu!”

“Damnatio-“

Sister Soyu, who had been waiting in a state of extreme concentration for my order, immediately transformed her gentle holy power into a fierce destructive beam that erased everything it touched.

“-memoriae!”

Like the first domino, the destructive beam “Damnatio Memoriae” that Sister Soyu fired instantly struck the spot that would trigger all the chain explosions.

The calm before the storm.

The eye of the typhoon.

It was so quiet after the long-awaited strike that I wondered if we had targeted the wrong spot. Or had Sister Soyu aimed incorrectly? Or was it just bad luck that it barely missed and failed to detonate? All sorts of thoughts crossed my mind, but…

Rumble-rumble-

“Eek!”

“Oh! Here comes the big one!”

“Captain!”

“Everyone, lower your posture! Just in case, Subin, Sister Soyu, and Sister Yehyun, deploy the maximum defensive skills you can!”

After a moment of silence.

Incomparable to mere ‘mines’.

——————————————————-!!!!!!

Several otherworld claymores (feat. fire elementals) exploded simultaneously, completely overturning the entire installation area.