" Take cover!" Noah shouted leaping toward Milo to shield him from the incoming projectiles. Unlike normal people, his reaction time shortened a lot after whatever modified his body. He tackled Milo into the ground taking cover behind one of the large rocks.
Even in such a dire situation, he didn't forget to first protect his head by shrinking his body and making sure that he took the brunt of the attack on his back. For some reason, after becoming a porcupine with who knows how many number of arrows in his back he felt that as long as his internal organs were protected, he wouldn't die easily.
Which meant, he would always try to take attacks on his back since it had the most amount of muscle as well as protected his core.
" Are you alright?" Noah first checked Milo, fortunately other than few bullets on his legs he wasn't fatally injured.
Since Milo was facing the hail of volley, his gear basically protected all his vital parts of his legs. The armour that Noah had given them came with protective titanium lining that could deflect basic frontal attack that could in theory protect their main veins like femoral veins.
But unfortunately, Noah himself wasn't that lucky while he was facing away, there were couple of projectiles that hit the soft side of his inner thigh fortunately, he wouldn't bleed out but it hurt like hell!
" I-i....I am fine but what was that?" Milo was in shock for a second before composing himself. He could see the pained expression on Noah's face and knew that his captain was hurt.
" I have no time to explain. You can fully move your body right?" Noah asked to which Milo nodded. There were few bruises but nothing that would hamper his mobility. He knew now why, Julia, Tang and Jake were having such a tough time dealing with the enemies.
" Good, I will provide cover fire so you should take the opportunity to run and use the bushes to position yourself. Just be ready to fire anything that moves." Noah commanded. Since they knew the general direction of enemies, there was a chance for Milo to get a jump on them.
Milo could feel the urgency in Noah's voice. He first hand experience the strange weapons of the enemy. He didn't know but Noah already had a faint guess what they were up against. But still just to be sure, he pulled out his spare gloves and threw it on one side of their cover while poking his head to glance at the enemy from the other side.
His tactic worked as the glove was peppered with projectile while he finally got a good look at the weapon the enemy was using. As he predicted, the long stick with a crude barrel looked remarkably similar to the ancient flintlock that he had seen in museums.
Its suffice to say that he was extremely shocked to see hot weapons in this place, he wasn't even aware that there was gunpowder in this world. Even if the penetration power was abysmal, it could still hurt normal people.
What's more, these people came out of nowhere. From their strange attire which covered every part of their face with mask, they felt like a mismatch elite group probably contracted by the Sablethorn family.
There was no other explanation how these people came so far into the woods without anyone noticing. Since Sablethorn and his merchant cronies had regularly took care of monsters, it was clear that they would be aware of loopholes and shortcuts in these dense jungles.
By now, Milo used their long reloading time to slip away from their encampment. Noah was the only one remaining, he was hurt but not so much that he wouldn't be able to fight beside, he also had his trump card which would work especially well in this scenario.
He first pulled out the reserve flare and fired it to surprise the enemy. As he expected, the red light gleamed brightly under the approaching darkness. He took the opportunity to escape few feet away abandoning his previous position and used his superhuman strength to directly leap onto a tall tree.
He didn't stop and kept climbing high enough where he wouldn't be spotted. His enemies were still distraught thinking that it was some sort of magic attack when they saw sudden red flames, expecting things to explode, everyone on their side quickly covered themselves waiting for something to happen.
After couple of moment, they finally notice that other than bright red flame still fizzing out nothing else happened. What appeared to be the leader quickly commanded everyone to search the vicinity for rats.
Just when they were about to rush across the road, two rats came to disturb their plan. If not for them, they would have already overwhelm the enemy with their numbers. Unlike Julia, Tang and Jake that were tired from their first fight, they were waiting to ambush them, coupled with the fact they never faced humans before, despite their superior firepower, the enemy was able to juke them out on several occasion.
Even with larger reload time, they were trained in rhythm which gave a illusion that they were firing constantly. Tang team who were novice didn't understand what was happening foolishly believing that their enemies too had similar guns which made them act passively trying to defend their ground.
Noah who was high up could see everything, with setting sun the visibility would lessen but he wouldn't wait for that to happen. He had been saving one slot for today's summoning just for a situation like this.
Right as he was gathering his magic for the summon, he saw the thing that made his scalp tingle. The familiar large black tube was very familiar to him, he didn't even react before a deafening sound reverberated across the whole forest.
The rock that he was previously hiding behind instantly turned to smithereens with debris flying across a five meter radius.
" Fuck even cannons? I might have to capture few of them for interrogation." He didn't hesitate and pulled out the perfect weapon to turn the tides on them.
A bag of grenades! That's right, he was going to shower them with ten kilograms worth of explosives. With the height advantage, it was easier for him to cover the whole area practically sealing these scoundrels fate.
He pulled out a handful of grenades and began throwing them around like madman. He didn't care about anything other than emptying his arsenal all around the dense forest. It might lead to forest fire but he couldn't be bothered thinking that if these cannons finds it's way toward where Tang and her team was fighting it would lead to their certain death!