Earth’s Doom Starts with… Me?

Silence.

That was it.

There were no sounds other than the crackling sound of dying, falling trees that failed to hold onto its life for more than a few hours.

Strange.

I was sure I heard my rifle went off, and I even heard the sound of air splitting when Ioriel swung his sword.

And yet, how could the both of us be uninjured?

"My, my, how energetic~"

General Zhang's deep, husky voice made me turn my head to my left, where I saw him trotting slowly over here.

"What did you do?" The elf prince growled, and extended his arm towards the smiling white-haired man.

It was then that I noticed his sword was gone. He tried to materialize the sword back again, but for some reason, the glowy green smoke just swirled around for a few seconds, before finally diminishing into nothing. Not even a speck of dust.

I scanned his body from top to bottom, but I found no signs of my condensed mana bullet hitting him. I flew my gaze to the areas around him, but still, no signs of my stray bullet whatsoever. How could I miss from that range? And how could he also miss?

"I'm playing referee, that's all." General Zhang chuckled in delight.

"What trick are you pulling, human?" The elf prince shouted in a low growl.

I had no idea what was going on, and I was on the verge of losing my conscience from loss of mana, but rather than listening to some villainy speech, now was the perfect chance to strike.

'BANG!'

I instantly opened fire again, this time with just a normal mana bullet because I legit couldn't muster up another condensed mana bullet and still be standing upright after that.

'Shing!'

Ioriell put up his mana shield again, but this time, only for a split second upon contact with my bullet. He immediately dropped it afterwards for some odd reason. What was going on?

"Oof, little cub, you might want to cut down on your mana consumption," general Zhang chuckled and tapped my shoulder, "go and rest. I'll take it from here. You did great."

"What?" I raised an eyebrow.

Suddenly, Ioriell launched a high kick towards general Zhang's left temple without warning. I guess he was thinking the same thing as me, that this was the perfect opportunity to strike instead of exchanging banters.

"Nope. Denied."

General Zhang casually said as he stopped the kick. Or rather, the kick stopped by itself without general Zhang having to defend against it.

"What is this? A barrier? No..." Ioriell questioned with a bewildered look on his face.

"Huh? But it is, princey~ It's just like your wind 'barrier' that you used~" General Zhang hummed, "you concentrated your wind magic in the shape of a dome, making it look and function like how a barrier would."

"So you noticed." The elf prince replied with a frown.

"Of course. That's not barrier magic. I've seen barrier magic," general Zhang explained, "you just did some fancy trick, and so did I~"

Ah yes, Dmitri was a barrier magic user, wasn't he? I didn't even notice the difference...

"I thought your element was lightning?" Ioriell questioned. Yeah, I thought so, too?

"That's true, but right now I can also do wind magic," he turned to look at me and winked, "am I a 'man who can do both' yet, little cub?"

"No. That's still not how it works..." I sighed. How could he still crack jokes in a situation like this?

"How can you have two elements at once, human?" The growingly impatient elf prince inquired further.

"That's none of your business. Besides, a man needs to have some mysteries, right?" General Zhang chuckled lightly, "now get behind me, little cub. Let me show you how I take care of things."

I was going to retort because I thought it would be better to gang up on Ioriell rather than dramatically attacking one by one, but when I felt the sudden mana surge coming from general Zhang, I felt like my words were stuck alongside my breaths inside my throat.

My eyes went wide as every part of my body tensed up. My instinct screamed at me to run away, but my legs wouldn't move an inch. Just as my body started to tremble, I felt a gentle pat on my head.

"Don't be scared. I'm not here to hurt you." General Zhang whispered in my ear, and suddenly, I felt something running inside my veins, inside my body and into my soul.

It felt strangely pleasant. Kind of like how it felt when my brigade that was stranded for days without much water and food on our hands, finally stumbled upon a clear stream of water. It was so pleasantly satisfying, as if we had finally found our lifeline, that we refused to leave that spot for days.

I reached out to grab his shirt by reflex, and stopped him from going away. I liked this feeling. Don't go.

"Eh?" His surprised voice alerted me, and snapped me out of my trance.

"Eh? Ah-- sorry!" I flinched and immediately jumped back in embarrassment. Huh, I could move my legs now? Neat.

He stared at me for a second or two in confusion, before finally grinning and pinched my cheek, "I'll come back in a bit. Wait here, okay?"

I was too stunned and befuddled to properly process what was going on. So instead, I shifted my focus on the elf prince who seemed to be taking a defensive stance, wary of the strange white-haired man.

Sweats were running down his face, and his eyes ceased to blink, probably not wanting to let this mysterious general off his sight even for a second. Made me wonder, did I also look like that?

"Your sword, your power, and my little cub's bullet," general Zhang slowly said as he took one step, two steps towards the trembling elf prince, "I'll return everything to you."

Silence.

'BOOM!'

A flash of light tickled my vision for what seemed like a hundredth of a second, before the loud booming sound painted the night air, leaving a loud, ringing noise in my ears. What was that, a grenade!? Sure sounded like one, at least.

I instinctively dropped and flattened my body on the ground, just like what I was taught to do when encountering common grenades. Fortunately, I felt no heat, no sharp pain, or even anything, at all. Nothing touched me.

...But how? Even if nothing hit me, shouldn't I at least feel the heat from the explosion or something? Or maybe, at the very least, my eardrums would've been gone now, right?

I slowly opened my eyes with a little squint to make sure that there was no dangerous debris flying around before I fully opened them.

"Awake now, little cub?"

A figure was crouching next to me, and even without fully seeing it, I immediately knew who it was. The shameless eel.

"What did you do?" I asked as I fully opened my eyes and sat up, looking around for some clues on what just happened.

"It's done. You're fine, I put up a 'barrier' for you earlier." He grinned mischievously.

"Done? You mean the elf prince?" I hurriedly got up and lifted my rifle again, charging it up with mana... Wait, I had an abundance of mana now. I no longer felt as if my mana pool was about to be as dry as the Sahara desert. How did that eel do this? Healing spell?

"Calm down, little cub. No need to be so tense all the time~" General Zhang said as he got up and patted my shoulder, "sometimes you just need to enjoy the show, you know?"

"Is he dead already?" I questioned with a nervous look, because I still couldn't spot the elf prince's body through the thick smoke that wafted in the air as a result of the explosion from earlier.

"No. I made sure he isn't dead yet." General Zhang said with a small grin, but instead of a happy, casual grin, it looked more like a sinister one.

"...Why?" I asked.

"Well, follow me," he replied, "oi, porcupine! You should come, too! You're okay-ish now, rightttt~?"

Oh, right, general Emilio!

I looked in the direction of where I yeeted him earlier, and found him walking towards us with the help of his spear as a makeshift crutch. He had tied a cloth over his wound on his left flank, and although the cloth was soaked with blood, at least it seemed like the bleeding already lessened.

"Yeah," general Emilio replied concisely as always, "let's end that elf prince and get this over with."

I nodded and we both followed general Zhang into the thick smoke.

"Hey, eel. You said you can use wind magic now. Can't you just blow this smoke away?" I asked while still keeping my finger on the trigger, just in case something jumped at us.

"I can't now." He chuckled.

Huh? He couldn't? ...Wait.

Now that I carefully thought about it, I think I finally understood how his 'magic' worked.

But the thing is, didn't humans only have one magic? If his magic was transforming into a body of water, then what was this?

"Ah, there he is." General Zhang clapped his hands together in delight when he saw the elf prince's unmoving body, covered with blood all over. His limbs weren't in good shape, either. He was missing his right leg, and his arms were twisted in the wrong direction.

"...Are you sure he's alive?" I grimaced. As much as I was familiar with this, seeing this happen to anyone still wasn't something I'd rejoice upon.

"Of course, he's alive," general Zhang crouched beside Ioriell's body, "I kept him alive so you can rip his heart out, after all."