72: Chapter 72 Sniping and Ambush

Some of the young soldiers who had retreated from the 32nd Army were only 15 years old, yet their eyes had been cruelly ruined by the Japanese invaders' shameless use of poison gas.

Tuaner was burning with suppressed rage, but since Mia spent every day saving lives and every night ambushing enemies with her, she really couldn't—and wouldn't dare—take it out on her.

She could only take her anger out on the Japanese soldiers.

Tuaner had one principle: anyone who didn't look like a soldier got priority treatment. She understood the logic of capturing the ringleader first.

Even if she couldn't capture the leader, killing a few junior officers was good enough; if enough of them died, their grassroots command would collapse. That was a lesson Mia had taught her.

She fired two consecutive shots at the guy in the strange outfit standing in front of the position. This, too, was something Mia had taught her: as long as your hand didn't shake, your reload speed was fast, your mindset was steady, and your posture remained unchanged, it was possible to land the second shot on the same spot.

Furthermore, after days and nights of rigorous training and tempering on the battlefield, her [Basic Ranged Combat] had reached a terrifying Lv25, and her [Basic Firearm Mastery] had reached Lv15. She was every bit the look of an average Shinso in the army.

After firing the two shots, Mia's [Malice Perception] sent a warning. Tuaner, who was in the middle of heading downstairs, paused, then used the momentum to leap backward into a corner of the earthen building's ruins.

Suddenly, there was a sound of wind behind Tuaner. She instinctively ducked, and a paper crane flew past the spot where she had been standing, then exploded with the force roughly equivalent to a hand grenade.

It was only then that Tuaner's party channel received a system notification:

[Paradise Lost System Notification: Jiang Tuaner has killed the hostile Onmyoji — Yamashita Hisayuki. Gained 1 Merit Point, and obtained 1/3 of Yamashita Hisayuki's spatial items and equipment. Settlement will be via treasure chest, redeemable after the dungeon ends. Camp confrontation has officially begun. Killing hostile Adventurers in a slaughter dungeon yields rewards!]

[Current Dungeon Task Updated: Defend the NPC for at least 3 days. Facing the enemy's powerful warships and guns, and their eerie sorcerers, what are your chances of winning?]

"Good grief? Tuaner actually got the first kill?" Ryan teased Tuaner in the channel.

"Hurry and support Tuaner, drop everything you're doing!" Mia acted every bit the captain of this squad.

"I'm okay for now, uh..." Tuaner's sentence was cut short as her homemade, patched-up, dust-colored ghillie suit was seen through. A wolf-like shikigami lunged at her at high speed. She hurriedly exchanged two blows with the wolf shikigami, tossed a [Blood Rose Rosary] onto the wolf's head, and without even checking the result, turned and ran.

"I'm still good, you don't need to rush!" Tuaner bit down on her little canine tooth and finished the second half of her sentence defiantly, sprinting toward her own position.

The two shots from earlier—one had shattered the Onmyoji's paper talisman defense, and the other had, quite coincidentally, struck him right between the eyebrows. As she ran, Tuaner couldn't help but suspect that [Girl's Expectation], the most unreliable skill of all, had taken effect.

While fleeing, Tuaner stumbled, feeling a bit dizzy. She reached toward her lower back and frowned slightly; she had been scratched on her back during that last encounter. There were five bloody claw marks there; she must have been poisoned.

Behind her were at least two Adventurers from the hostile camp, along with an unknown number of Japanese supernatural individuals.

She pulled out the [Antidote] that Mia had specially prepared for her—one that had only recently been mastered—and downed it, continuing to sprint along the streets, corners of buildings, and shadows toward the direction Mia and the others were coming from.

She leaped over a rooftop, her shadow passing over the rubble in the alleyway under the moonlight, creating a shimmering effect like air being scorched in the summer heat. Tuaner twisted her waist in mid-air and performed a sharp flip, dodging a sword thrust from below. A thin, small-statured ninja emerged from the rubble.

"I'm surrounded..." A bitter feeling welled up in Tuaner's heart. So, killing that one earlier was an accident; these bastards had been planning to kill her all along.

"Hold on a little longer, I'm almost there..." Mia's anxious voice called out to Tuaner in the squad channel.

"I'm fine! Just a few Japs. You guys be careful not to get ambushed." Tuaner's mouth, the toughest part of her entire body, remained as stubborn as ever.

"Bang!" The crisp sound of an Arisaka rifle came from the west; a scattered Nationalist squad was retreating in the midst of street fighting. Mia was also fast approaching from the southwest. Tuaner narrowed her eyes, watching four dark figures looming behind a broken wall: three ninjas holding wakizashi in reverse grips, and an Onmyoji wearing a hunting robe and a black cap, holding a bat-shaped fan.

The Onmyoji's white mask glimmered with a greenish-grey hue under the moonlight, and the bat fan was soaked in yin energy. The smallest ninja suddenly vanished, and Tuaner knew it was coming for her. She jerked backward, and a cold glint sliced through the strands of hair flying in front of her forehead.

"Sizzle—" Her back collided with a pile of scorching shrapnel, immediately burning three charred, circular holes into her hunting suit. Tuaner gasped in pain, but she caught a glimpse of five cuts appearing on the ground where she had just been standing—an invisible wire trap. If she hadn't dodged in time, she would have been hacked to pieces by now.

"Capture the ringleader first!" Tuaner wasn't highly educated, but right now she was fixated on that one stubborn logic. She pulled out the [Blood Rose Rosary] and began scattering it recklessly all around, as if it cost nothing. Suddenly, poison fog, explosions, and smoke filled the air, mixed with quite a few [Blood Rose Seeds].

Next, she took out her trump card from her personal storage space—the highest-level equipment she could use so far—the [recurve bow]. With a wave of her hand, [Fear Spell], [Weaken], and [Amplify Damage] were all cast upon that Onmyoji. In that moment, he seemed to have become the illegitimate child of misfortune.

Wind elemental energy gathered and solidified on the bow. Then, she released the bowstring, and the [Breath of Wind], a once-a-day ability innate to the [recurve bow], flew from Tuaner's fingertips, heading straight for the Onmyoji's brow.

A ninja who had crossed through the poison fog also swung a short blade in front of Tuaner. She couldn't dodge it, so she raised the bow to barely block it. However, her shoulder was still slashed, and blood began to gush out instantly.

［Breath of Wind］ gently passed through the body of the Onmyoji, who was holding up his bat fan, quietly taking his life. With this, both Adventurers from the hostile faction that had appeared in Jiangbei had been slain, but Tuaner had also been stabbed three times and was kneeling on the ground. The three ninjas surrounded her. Poison-tipped kunai and shuriken were fired toward Tuaner like a shower of flowers.

[Jiang Tuaner killed Onmyoji: Gross Profit 2, obtained...]

"I'm going to die..." Tuaner felt a sense of unwillingness. Just then, a talisman slipped from her chest, and the oil-stained paper spontaneously ignited before hitting the ground, turning into a golden light that enveloped Tuaner. "It's that bratty Taoist!" Tuaner was startled, followed by the joy of having survived a disaster. Because in the corner of her eye, a fiery red silhouette was already rushing toward her at high speed.

Anyone else might not have been able to tell, but Mia recognized the technique on Tuaner instantly; it was the all-too-familiar Golden Light Spell she had swindled from Zhang Chulan...