"How much mana does the balloon has left?" Times asked the soldier while surveying the activities below.
"Enough to get us home, Lord General." The soldier gave a muffled reply while still tinkering on something below the folding bed. I noticed a few glowing particles from that place too.
"Good! Can we go higher?"
"Afraid not, Lord General! The balloon couldn't stand such a harsh atmosphere!" The soldier then perked his body from underneath the folding bed and looked at me with prying eyes. "And the boy might not handle such high altitude."
Times then looked at me with knitted eyebrows and gritting teeth after Dominion's statement.
'Oh, he's thinking about it.'
Fortunately, Times shook his head lightly and began surveying the ground again. That wordless exchange we had just now was enough for me to let out a sigh of relief.
"The net wouldn't reach us at this height, Lord General!" The soldier uttered while crouched on the ground, peering slightly outside to check the surroundings. "And the winds are blowing in our favor. We might escape this one!"
"Have you already forgotten what happened to our balloon earlier, or need I remind you how improbable it is for an aircraft to shake like that midair?" Times replied with his usual stern expression and mockingly commanding tone.
"No, Lord General!" The soldier lowered his head.
"They have something else up their sleeves, and it has enough power to reach us. Do something about our speed, or I'll deal with it myself." Times then turned back and looked down at the crouching soldier with his deep sunken glare. "Without you."
Some invisible shockwaves then darted off all around us, some nearer while others are not even close. It looked like some kind of wind Projectile spell was being thrown our way; countless people cast them in our direction based on the sheer amount of waves shooting into the clouds. Luckily, the casters have quite a terrible aim; only one shot has hit us so far.
I looked down after doing what the soldier had instructed and observed the surroundings with Times. "With their accuracy, they can rain us with endless spells and still reach the Keep on time."
Times looked at me with an even more suspicious gaze, but there seemed to be no animosity in his eyes, just pure shock and intrigue.
"That's because the kapres are still blind to what's happening; their eyes are not as good as ours. I'm guessing they still can't see past the thick fog above them, so they're only blindly striking the air according to their warlord's orders. But with the sheer amount of them bombarding us, at least a few Projectiles would hit; they already had one success so far. The slower we are, the more their successes would mount." Times then leaned closer to me and whispered while pointing his wings at the warlord below. "Their chances increased because one of them could see us clearly; it's that guy, Bismarck, the current general leading the kapres. Can you see those weapons the other kapres are holding?"
"Yes, the ones that look like tubes, right?"
Times paused and just looked at me with narrowed eyes. It didn't seem like he would be continuing his statement soon; he's just staring intently like he's trying to burn my face with a gaze.
"Sir?" I asked, my heart still pumping from all the adrenaline-inducing things happening around us.
"Right, yes." Times shook his head and tapped his wings on my shoulder. "I can see the shockwaves coming from those tube weapons. That's completely new information for me; they might be saving that shockwave weapon for occasions like this. Use your human eyes. Can you see them?"
Times surely is being a bit more talkative right now; maybe this situation has also gotten him pumped enough to be less cold and more willing to share.
"Yeah. I can see the field, but it's too far like I'm looking at an ant colony." I tried to lean out of the basket with knitted eyes, but I really couldn't see anything unless I used my ZOOM command.
"I'm sure you can do something about it." Times then tapped his wings on my back and gestured to me to go. "Move to the other side; I'll check this area, and you handle that side. Tell us immediately if something abnormal is happening."
I nodded immediately and rushed into where Times instructed me to go. But something suddenly caught my interest. It's on the Ziggurat ZOOM screen.
A gigantic weapon. But it looked normal in the hands of the giant warlord. Is that a crossbow? It has such a massive arrow... No, that's not an arrow.
"HARPOON!" I screamed before ducking into the ground. I rechecked the second ZOOM screen and saw the warlord unloading a volley of three harpoons right into our direction.
Times noticed it too. But it was too late; he couldn't do anything about the swiftly moving projectile now. Before he could even utter a sound, a harpoon suddenly pierced the basket, right a few inches away from my crotch.
"OH, FUCK!" I stood up immediately and leaped away from the protruding arrowhead. If I were crouching just a bit lower, that damn harpoon would have castrated me! In my panic, I moved my gaze towards a high-pitched sound; that was how I saw where the two other harpoons flew into. One curved away from us, and one almost pierced through our balloon.
"We're close!" The soldier shouted while pointing at the walls of Skystead Keep. He's right. We are awfully close, not even a kilometer away from the finish line; we just need to somehow get out of this situation.
'Shit. Why did they even get this hot air balloon? These people have wings!'
'Fuck. This situation wouldn't have happened if his daughter didn't leave the Keep in the first place!'
'WE DON'T EVEN HAVE A "LATER" ANY MORE, DUMBASS!'
I was too busy arguing with Dominion to realize the shot that solidified our fall.
Silence and awe plagued the basket, jaws dropped and eyes popped; all our eyes were on it. And for just a few minutes, everything in the world seemed to have disappeared.
Darkness.
Until my fear punched me back to life.
Shit...
That harpoon… it punctured the balloon!