Chapter 48: The Turning Point

Bang!

A magic bullet shot toward a Batwing Demon weaving through the air twenty meters from Luka.

Whoosh.

The bullet grazed the demon’s wing, clipping only a single spike.

The demon shrieked and accelerated by a notch.

It spun around, locked onto the ambusher behind it, and raised its gun to return fire.

Seeing the shot miss, Luka frowned and clicked her tongue, then dodged aside.

She had finally been forced to expose her greatest weakness: marksmanship.

The pressure weighed heavily on her.

Before stepping onto this battlefield, she had only trained for three days at the recruit camp.

Despite the baptism of repeated deaths and battles, her aim was still far behind veterans like Moye and Alesia.

So she had always tried to work around that weakness, relying on magic and wit to overcome tough enemies.

She would ambush, lay traps, have teammates pin enemies down, or sneak up behind them while invisible and take careful aim.

As long as she created that kind of advantage, even her poor aim was enough to handle things.

But now she had run into an enemy that could counter her Phantom Mirage, forcing her into an aerial duel with the Batwing Demons. Her weakness was fully exposed.

In this situation, Phantom Mirage gave her at most two seconds of breathing room.

The first second, she had to evade the fire zone, twist her body into position, and pick a target.

The remaining second, she had to raise her gun, track a fast-moving target, channel mana, and fire.

Under these conditions, hitting the target was far harder than she had imagined.

That last shot, grazing the demon’s wing, had already been a superhuman performance at full focus.

The last time she fought four Batwing Demons, back when she’d first met Alesia, her bullets had gone wide by several meters.

Should she give up?

If she gave up now, she could flee directly toward Moye and Alesia.

Then she would have to survive the Sky Eye Demon’s pursuit for three days of flight?

The thought appeared in her mind for only a moment before she dismissed it.

She couldn’t retreat just because things got hard.

She had no idea how many equally dangerous, even deadlier, situations lay ahead.

If she ran away every time the battlefield left her comfort zone, how could she ever get stronger?

She had always believed in the principle of sailing against the current: if you don’t advance, you fall back.

Since her aim was poor, she would train it.

Train it in real combat, between life and death.

A year of shooting fixed targets at the recruit camp could never compare to a few exchanges under a swarm of Batwing Demons.

Mind racing, Luka hesitated no longer.

She activated Phantom Mirage, dodged the demons’ volley, raised her gun, and aimed.

Bang.

The bullet grazed past the enemy. Miss.

If it missed, she’d try again.

She activated Phantom Mirage again, and in that single second of high-speed maneuvering, she focused her attention to the limit, trying to track the equally fast target.

Once, twice, three times…

Miss. Miss. Still miss.

Until she activated Phantom Mirage a sixth time.

Something strange happened.

Hum.

Under the extreme pressure and tension, a string in her mind seemed to snap.

A familiar feeling rose from the bottom of her heart.

Every scene of raising her gun and aiming at a nimble enemy at high speed felt like deja vu.

As if she had performed this exact action countless times, at some unknown time and place.

For a moment, a strange glint flashed in Luka’s blue pupils.

Finally, insight struck her. As if enlightened, she fired a precise shot.

Bang!

The magic bullet shot toward an empty space in front of the Batwing Demon.

At first glance, it looked like a complete miss.

But the demon seemed to welcome death. It shifted its body in that direction and collided squarely with the bullet.

A wet thud.

The bullet pierced through the demon’s chest, the sheer momentum blowing a large hole in it. Blood and flesh flew.

The demon managed only a short cry before its body was hurled backward and tumbled downward.

Success!

Luka was ecstatic.

What was that just now?

It was as if her body had developed muscle memory.

Every time she did an ultra-high-difficulty precision aim, it felt like solving a problem she had proven countless times before.

In the heat of battle, Luka didn’t have time to investigate the cause.

She quickly seized on that feeling and tried to replicate it.

She activated Phantom Mirage, dodged the volley.

Then raised her gun and aimed.

In that instant, the direction of her magic gun, the speed of the bullet, the effect of the wind, the movement trajectory of the Batwing Demons…

Countless pieces of information that could not easily be quantified but were nonetheless effective flashed through her cerebral cortex.

Deep in her mind, her subconscious processed and calculated them, and the result surfaced as an “intuition” she couldn’t put into words.

Bang!

The magic bullet flew again.

The nearest Batwing Demon’s head exploded. Brain matter scattered. Without even a scream, the headless corpse dropped.

The remaining eight Batwing Demons all changed expression.

Even the distant Sky Eye Demon’s huge single eye flickered with shock and doubt.

What happened?

When the first companion fell, they had thought it was just a slip on the demon’s part, compounded by a lucky shot from the Magica.

But now the Magica had killed a second without pause.

And by blowing its head off with a precise shot?

That couldn’t be coincidence.

Anxiety spread quickly among the Batwing Demons.

This Magica child’s threat level had suddenly skyrocketed.

They couldn’t give it any more room to show off.

The Sky Eye Demon’s gaze hardened. It quickly gave instructions for the Batwing Demons to attack more fiercely.

The Batwing Demons also sensed something was wrong. They beat their wings, picked up speed, and tightened the encirclement.

They absolutely could not give this Magica any space to dodge.

But then, under their startled, suspicious gazes…

The Magica hovered in midair, lowered her gun, and stopped trying to evade.

“Hmph.”

Luka looked at the Batwing Demons closing in. The corner of her mouth lifted in a relieved smile.

She had no mana left to activate Phantom Mirage.

It looked like this life was over.

But she felt no regret.

Because she had undergone a transformation and gained something more precious than a life.

Still smiling, Luka raised both hands and flipped off the surrounding Batwing Demons with her middle fingers.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

Then a volley of gunshots rang out at once.

Luka’s body was torn to shreds.

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