Earth’s Doom Starts with… Me?

Chapter 78: The hunt for the fallen prince (1)

"Oh wait, before we go down, let's not forget this." I reached for my bag and shuffled its content around, looking for a key item that should be here, according to Jeanne.

"What now?" Luke asked as he bent down to peek at my bag's content.

"This!" I beamed and raised two pairs of goggles, "night vision goggles! Hehe!"

"Ahh, right. Those elves have good eyes at night," he pondered, "you did your homework, kid."

"Of course I did, Elena drilled that information into my head, how could I not?" I pouted as I extended my arm to hand him a pair. According to what Jeanne said, general Zhang specifically told her to pack some stuff double the amount for my bag. As expected of a fellow parasite bearer.

"Ah, no need. I can see perfectly any time of the day," he smiled proudly and crossed his arms over his slightly exposed chest, "cool, right?"

"Nah." I flatly replied and shoved the pair into the bag, while wearing the other one.

"You're just jealous you can't be as cool as your big bro." He pouted.

"Excuse you? You're as far from the word 'cool' as you can possibly be." I huffed and picked up my bag, before fastening it behind my back.

"Just admit it~" Luke chuckled as he walked up beside me, "come, let's quickly build that weird toy and get you that win so we can come home."

--------

After I filled Luke in about what happened so far, and why we needed to hunt some elves, we quickly headed down to the forest where I could already hear the commotion happening. Shouts and screams filled the smokey air, and although the moon was already shining beautifully above us, it wasn't dark at all.

On the contrary, everything was bright. Bright orange. The fire had laid its hands upon everything that it could touch, and even coming inside would be dangerous for anyone, presumably even elves.

"Dang, how are we supposed to go inside?" I cursed as I pulled my water chameleon's cloak tighter and covered my nose, "are those generals even doing okay?"

"Let's find another route. There's no way they're fighting while getting roasted alive," Luke suggested, "there must be a part of the forest where the fire isn't as bad as this. Come."

"Okay." I nodded and we both ran to find somewhere we could step our foot on, somewhere that wouldn't make our trachea crispy in just a few minutes.

After circling around for a while, we finally stumbled upon a figure that seemed to be walking in a group of 5.

"Halt!" I whispered, and both of us immediately got down on the ground to avoid being seen.

"They must be elves. Can we eliminate them?" Luke pointed out from beside me.

'BANG!'

The sound of the drip rifle we constructed earlier popped off for the third time since we left it alone. I faintly saw one of the figures lifted their hand and pointed in the direction of the rifle. Through the fairly thin smoke, compared to the place from before, I could see another figure readied their bow, as if wanting to shoot the rifle.

"Can we?" I brought my assault rifle close to my shoulder and aimed through the scope.

'BANG!'

"Of course we can. Don't slack off." I smirked as I saw the figure who was pulling the bowstring flop on the ground. Great, that was one down, a few more to go.

Instead of noticing us, they frantically pointed towards the drip rifle's direction again, before scrambling and running towards different directions. Perfect. They thought a sniper made the kill.

"Don't you run~" Luke hummed beside me and bit his thumb until it drew blood.

"Snake art: Venom."

I watched in awe as his blood swirled in the air, and slowly changed colour from red to a slightly dark, but still shiny, purple. He didn't stop at that, and plucked a single strand of hair using his other hand, and threw it into the air.

"Snake art: Skin of Steel."

The single strand of hair from before immediately hardened, and he easily caught it using his hand. After that, he brought it near the purple blood, which immediately enclosed the hair fully.

'Shwp!'

With a single, powerful throw, he launched the needle-like hair towards one of the elves that was running away. My eyes were unable to follow the hair's movement, and all I could see was the body of the elf falling on the ground while holding the back of their neck.

After a couple of seconds of squirming and twitching, their body tensed up and finally stopped moving.

"Not bad, huh?" Luke grinned at me after the both of us witnessed that scene.

Instead of answering, I peeked through my scope once more, and tracked another elf that was having trouble running away due to the forest fire.

'BANG!'

"Not bad, but my kill count is still higher than yours." I chuckled.

"Hey, but my kill was cooler!" Luke pouted and smacked my head.

"Ow!" I rubbed the back of my head, "yeah, yeah, sure."

"Wait, really? You admit that I was cool?"

"Uh... I was going to say your magic, or whatever that was, was pretty neat. But nevermind, I take that back." I stuck out my tongue at him and continued to peek through my scope. Perhaps I could get another kill if I was lucky.

"No, don't take it back!" Luke whined, kinda adorably, "I even went through the trouble of naming them!"

"Wait, you named them yourself?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah! Cool, right? I think it will make the moment more dramatic and cool if I shout the skill name or something. Hehe." Luke explained as he scratched the back of his head.

"I... I have no comment," I sighed, "anyway, I didn't know you could do that. I thought you could only do some crystal acid magic or something, seeing that your serpent form did that."

"Huh? But that was exactly the same power I had as a serpent, though?" He questioned.

"What? Clearly not. You should get your brain checked."

"You're not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you?" He snickered.

"Ugh, just explain." I frowned and lined up the crosshair with a running figure that I spotted. Long, untied flowy hair with wacky armor? Yup. Must've been an elf. Wasn't our party member.

'BANG!'

Another one down.

"That blood thingy earlier was just my venom. You know, snakes, venom?" He pointed at his bloody thumb, and then his teeth.

"Uh-huh." I nodded.

"And that hair thing was basically like how I could harden my skin as a serpent, but I used it on my hair specifically."

"Ahh, now I understand!" I looked up at him with wide eyes, "hey, that's actually pretty cool."

"Right~?"

"The skill. Not you. You're never cool in my eyes." I huffed at him.

"Weird. Ladies used to always love this form," he put his fingers on his chin and looked down, as if he was in deep thoughts, "they often told me that I was cool and stuff. They even said I was super sexy and hot. Ah, but don't you use those words. Bad words."

"Ack, don't treat me like a kid! I can use those words if I want to!" I clicked my tongue and got up, ready to continue our journey into the burning forest, which still sounded like a terrible idea no matter how hard I tried to convince myself it wasn't.

"No. Don't say those words to men. Or even women. You never know what those humans are thinking." He lectured me as we walked further ahead.

"Only humans?" I tilted my head. Wasn't he usually very indiscriminative towards all species?

"Well, you can use those words on me, since that's a fact." He smugly said.

"No, thanks." I groaned and kept walking while ignoring his protests.

As we marched further and further into the forest, I started to feel my breathing getting heavier. Ugh, these smokes are getting annoying. I had to hurry up and find them!

'BANG!'

I opened fire on the sixth elf I've shot down since I stepped into this forest. So far, we had eliminated around a little above 10 elves, mine and Luke's kill count combined. It was pretty far from what I'd hoped for, honestly.

I was sure that the second prince had at least 50 elves with him, which meant we were only able to subdue around a fifth of them. Not a good look, especially because the elf prince himself was already strong enough to defeat us three if we weren't careful enough.

"Tch. Let's do this faster, big bro." I clicked my tongue and fastened my walking speed while looking left and right for any signs of stray elves.

"Hey, hey. Don't be impatient. They'll be fine, they're also experienced fighters." Luke assured me as he followed my steps closely.

"Yeah, but I don't think we would be in prime condition with all this smoke burning our airway, wouldn't we?" I said in between gasps of air. Damn, I really should've bought a mask before coming here.

"Ah, there!" Luke's sudden call out alerted me, and I mounted my rifle on my shoulder as fast as I could.

But before I could pull the trigger, my vision blurred for a second. I hesitated on pulling the trigger, but suddenly the target stopped moving and fell down.

"I got him for you," Luke let out a sigh of relief, "what's wrong? Were you unable to get a clear view of him?"

"No... It's just..." I frowned and lowered my rifle, "never mind. Let's continue. Thank you for covering me."

"No problem. But what's wrong?" He persisted in asking me.

"Not what's wrong, but what's not wrong? How can you still be so nonchalant after inhaling this smoke?" I said with heavy breathings.

"Ah, I see, so that's why you were kinda giddy," he exclaimed, "well, my body is kinda built different from humans, you know... A little bit of smoke like this is fine."

"Good for you, then." I replied concisely, too out of breath to argue.

We ventured deeper and each of us scored another kill without being noticed yet again, which was great.

"Stop. Wait." I said as I clutched the hem of his robe to stop him from walking.

"What is it?" He asked as he turned around and grabbed my shoulder.

"Umm, nothing. Just let me stop for a second, alright?" I said with difficulty while my gasps grew louder.

"Hey, is it that bad? You're starting to look pale." Luke's brows curled into a frown.

I brushed his hand off of my shoulder and straightened myself up, "no. Sorry, Let's continue now."

"Hey, wait--"

I didn't intend to ignore his protests as usual, but my mind was starting to get foggy and I had to fully concentrate to not get ambushed by the elves. Ugh, I didn't feel so good.

"Kid?"

Luke's voice faintly entered my ears, and I was going to turn around and answer him, but no words managed to escape my lips. Not only that, but why was everything around me spinning?

'THUD!'

...Huh?

Didn't I... fall?

If so, why did it feel comfortable? Wasn't the ground ashy and hard? This felt... Soft?

"Miss me, little cub?"