Once Chunas Kolger had at last worked out what Beyonder pathway his enemy belonged to, in the garden, the vineyard and the inside of the manor house the various Gehrman Sparrows all raised their left hands at once, bending the middle, ring and little fingers and stretching out forefinger and thumb to form simple imitations of a pistol.
Those forefingers, standing in for barrel and muzzle, snapped one after another to aim at Chunas Kolger up in the air, and the corresponding forearms jerked upward together as if from the recoil of gunfire.
Bang bang bang bang bang!
Amid that deafening sound, by the side of the «Corrupt Baron«, in white shirt and black trousers, rather illusory white doves emerged in great numbers, flying off in every direction — magnificent and beautiful.
This was the random mutation brought by that «tin-cased« pocket watch, the «
Chunas Kolger, who had used «Disorder« to interfere with the enemy's volley, saw all this — saw the doves flapping their wings, rising, vanishing in the sky — without the slightest astonishment.
He had long been mentally prepared.
He had been bearing the negative effects of that sealed artefact for several years!
Seizing the chance, without hesitation he raised both palms — one holding the «tin-cased« pocket watch, the other the strange handgun — about to clap them together.
This was «Distortion«: a «Distortion« aimed at every Gehrman Sparrow below.
For Chunas Kolger, the most exasperating thing in fighting a «Marauder« was that he could not tell whether an enemy appearing in front of him was a mystery puppet or the true body — unless the puppet was of crudely-made quality.
This meant that many of his Beyonder abilities he simply did not dare use, because they would have no effect on a mystery puppet.
— Area-type «Prohibition« was tolerable; but single-target «Deprivation« became completely meaningless in actual fighting, for no matter how many Beyonder abilities one stripped from a mystery puppet, the true body remained unaffected, and the opponent could simply switch to another puppet to solve the problem.
By similar reasoning, the «Amplification« of the negative effects of the magical items carried by the puppets had also been temporarily and strategically dropped by Chunas Kolger.
Likewise, the «Bestow« of the «Corrupt Baron« was even less useful — even worse than «Deprivation«, since «Deprivation« at least could rob the «Marauder's« puppet of its corresponding Beyonder ability, whereas the negative states «Bestowed« would mean nothing to the puppet, be it apathy, loss of fighting spirit, greedy haste or fixation on money: for a being that was essentially a corpse, without its own thinking or inclinations, all of it was meaningless.
Therefore Chunas Kolger had decided to solve, first, the problem of telling puppet from true body.
Others might be at a loss in this respect, but a high-Sequence strongman of the «Lawyer« pathway would have no such concern.
Everything has its rules, follows its laws, and the «Lawyer« demigods are good at finding the loopholes in them and turning those to their own advantage.
Combined with previous combat experience against other «Marauders«, and his careful thinking after the fact on how to handle such situations, Chunas Kolger was now quite certain that «Distortion« could counter the enemy.
He knew that a «Marauder« could swap places seamlessly between his true body and all his mystery puppets; what he meant to do was «Distort« this very point, turning it into: the «Marauder« can only swap with two or three specific puppets!
Thus the difficulty of distinguishing true body from puppet would fall to a minimum.
Naturally, were it not that «Distortion« may not exceed the necessary limits and that the area-type «Prohibition« had already reached its quantitative ceiling, Chunas Kolger would have used an even simpler approach — for instance, restricting the «Marauder« to swapping with only one puppet, or directly «Prohibiting« everyone from swapping with puppets at all.
Clap!
Chunas Kolger's two hands, one holding «Revere's Despairing Scream«, the other «The Concerto of Light and Shadow«, struck against one another as though making the gesture of compressing a wide area into a small one.
«Corrupt Baron«, «Distort«!
Without a sound, from his hands a deep-shadow-tinted red flower bloomed, as if to be offered to the Gehrman Sparrows in the garden, the vineyard and the manor house; while those frantic adventurers — thick or thin, normal-looking or ghastly — showed not the slightest abnormality.
Chunas Kolger too had met a random mutation, the random mutation brought on by the «Concerto of Light and Shadow«!
It had changed the effect of «Distortion« into summoning, from the garden below, a fresh flower.
And at this moment the illusory white doves bred from the air-cannon shells had not yet dispersed!
In this instant the battle between two demigods took on, in spite of itself, more than a touch of the absurd, the comic, the laughable.
Naturally, neither Gehrman Sparrow nor Chunas Kolger thought of it that way — least of all the latter, in whom that familiar feeling of helplessness welled up once again.
He did not pause; he was about to clap his hands together once more to complete the «Distortion«, opposing the random mutation by sheer number.
Yet Gehrman Sparrow was not a corpse and would not observe the etiquette of one-strike-each. That whole crowd of mad adventurers — some shaping pistols with their fingers, some levelling that «
At the same time, Chunas Kolger felt a stir; he turned his head slightly and looked upward — and saw, from within the great red moon hanging silently above the pitch-black spire, yet another figure emerging.
This figure wore a silk top hat, was wrapped in a black overcoat, with human-skin gloves and an iron-black revolver in his hand; gaunt features, sharply cut profile — yet another Gehrman Sparrow!
He bore the red moon at his back as he glided downward, his image growing larger, clearer, while the long-barrelled, iron-black revolver in his hand was already raised, levelled at Chunas Kolger.
Bang! Bang!
A bullet, made up alternately of transparent and translucent sections, shot out of the muzzle and bore straight down upon Chunas Kolger.