Dong! Dong! Dong! Dong! Dong!
The dense chain of explosions blended together, and countless bursting splashes formed a vast white curtain of water in front of the shield wall. The horrifying shockwaves crashed like tidal waves, battering the vanguard's defensive line wave after wave, causing several experienced adventurers to pale as the formation showed faint signs of crumbling.
"That's enough!"
An angry roar, as steady as a mountain range, rang out.
Gareth's burly figure strode forward like a mobile fortress, aggressively planting his massive tower shield—engraved with the Familia's emblem—at the very front of the entire formation.
No matter how many stormy waves those water cannonballs blasted against the shield's surface, his body remained as unmoving as a mountain rooted to the earth.
"Oh?"
Seeing this, Childe, standing on a floating ice block in the distance, showed no surprise in his eyes; rather, they burst with even more excited light.
"Haha, that's more like it! This is getting fun."
Rejoicing rather than panicking, he drew back the water longbow again, this time pulling the string into a full, taut moon.
An arrow, larger and more condensed than any before it, was frantically gathering energy on his bowstring, even forming a high-speed, spinning blue vortex at its tip.
"Whoever you are, like hell I'll let a bastard like you act so arrogant!!"
Bete, who had long since been unable to restrain himself, let out a violent, tyrannical curse.
No longer able to endure this passive beating, his legs abruptly exerted force, and he shot out from the protection of the shield wall. Becoming a flash of silver light on the shattered ice, he dashed madly toward Childe's position at a speed difficult for the naked eye to track.
"Bring it on!"
Childe laughed loudly, aimed at the silver flash, and released the bowstring.
The arrow he had been charging up for so long was no longer just a simple cannonball. The moment it left his hand, it instantly turned into a colossal, roaring torrent resembling a tsunami, intent on completely devouring Bete's figure.
However, right at that moment, another golden figure intercepted him, moving a split-second later but arriving first to step in front of that silver flash with a speed rivaling Bete's.
It was Ais.
Visible cyan gales coiled around the rapier in her hand, "Desperate".
"—Tempest!"
Accompanied by the short chant, the wind in her hand transformed into an invisible yet incredibly sharp blade.
Pfft—!
That berserk, rushing current of water was actually cleaved cleanly down the middle by her sword.
The violent torrent roared past the sides of Ais and Bete like the parted Red Sea, violently smashing against the ice wall behind them with a deafening boom.
"Beautifully done, Ais!"
A crisp, lively cheer rang out.
"We're going in, too."
The Amazon sisters, Tiona and Tione, charged out simultaneously from the left and right sides of the shield wall. Like two unsheathed blades, they flanked Childe from the sides.
A four-on-one probing offensive and defensive battle thus began.
Childe leaped to the top of the massive ice pillar created by the aftershock of Riveria's magic, looking down at the Loki Familia executives closing in from all four directions, his battle spirit soaring ever higher.
"Too slow, too slow, is this all the speed you've got?"
As he spoke, he casually and effortlessly fired three arrows consecutively at the silver figure rushing at the very front below.
The three water arrows formed a triangular pattern, sealing off all of Bete's advancing routes.
"Shut up!"
Bete roared, forcibly shifting directions while moving at high speed. With a nearly ninety-degree turn, he barely dodged the three water arrows that exploded at his feet.
Flying ice shards and water splashed against his body like shrapnel, but they couldn't slow his speed in the slightest.
"Tch, you sure can dodge!"
Childe clicked his tongue, seemingly slightly dissatisfied, but the bow in his hands didn't stop for even a moment.
His gaze fell upon the other golden figure on the opposite side, the one that made him feel the most threatened.
"Your wind is quite interesting!"
He praised, and several arrows seemingly grew eyes as they bypassed Bete and shot toward Ais from all sorts of tricky angles.
Every swing of her sword brought forth a small cyclone, accurately deflecting or shattering the incoming water arrows one by one.
Meanwhile, the Amazon sisters also initiated their coordinated attack.
"Hiya!"
Tiona took the lead. She brandished the massive double-bladed "Urga" with whistling force, adopting a sweeping, wide-open stance as she charged directly up the side of the ice pillar, trying to draw Childe's attention.
"Tione, cover me."
"Got it."
Tione, on the other hand, was much calmer. She followed closely behind her sister, the curved short swords "Urvas" in her hands like the fangs of a viper, always ready to launch a fatal strike from an unexpected blind spot the moment Childe dealt with Tiona.
"Oh?"
The corners of Childe's mouth curled up. Facing Tiona's charge, he didn't dodge; instead, he met her head-on, leaping down from the top of the ice pillar.
As he descended, the water longbow in his hands instantly dissipated, replaced by over a dozen smaller, more exquisite water arrows hovering around him.
"Taste this, Falling Arrow."
He pressed both hands downwards, and the dozen or so water arrows blanketed the climbing Amazon sisters like a downpour of rain.
"Waaaah, that's playing dirty!"
Tiona shrieked weirdly, forced to halt her charge and swing her giant blades to fend off the dense volley.
Meanwhile, using the momentum of his descent and the recoil from firing the arrows, Childe traced an elegant arc in the air, landing nimbly onto a shorter ice pillar nearby, once again pulling distance from everyone.
"Hey, you bastard, is hopping around like a rabbit all you know how to do? Come down and fight me fair and square if you've got the guts!"
Bete, his charges interrupted multiple times, finally couldn't help but curse out loud.
His handsome face was plastered with impatience and manic fury.
"Hehe, don't be so hasty, Mr. Wolf."
Childe, standing at his new vantage point, responded with a grin. "The bow is the weapon I am least adept with. If you can't even handle my greetings, you'll miss out on the real show that follows, you know?"
His words undeniably added fuel to the fire.
But in the distance, Finn's pupils contracted violently upon hearing that sentence.
The weapon he's least adept with?
Merely by using the weapon he was least skilled with, he was able to handle the combined assault of four First-Class Adventurers with ease, and even subtly maintained the initiative....
Just what kind of terrifying level of power had this man calling himself "Childe" reached?
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