"Watch out, Anawen's scattering pollen!"
Seeing Anawen begin to shake her head, Baiye was the first to react, seeing through her aim at a glance, and hurriedly warned the other three teammates at her side.
Anawen shook her head with a speed and force fit to scramble her own brains, and in an instant conjured a cloud of pollen that came drifting lazily toward them all.
The Hero and Leilei held their breath at the same time, while Biluo, at the very rear, rode the wind and shot dozens of meters away at an unbelievable speed, dodging clear of the pollen cloud's range.
Baiye tore a strip of cloth from her clothes to cover her mouth and nose, keeping herself from inhaling Anawen's pollen.
But she'd still underestimated the pollen's potency.
Even breathing in a single lungful through the cloth, Baiye felt a scorching heat sweep her whole body, her focus nearly impossible to hold.
She had to hold her breath and stab a short blade hard into her own thigh just to barely maintain her sanity.
"...This is bad, I can't hold on..."
At the words, Baiye turned to look back.
In a mere ten-odd seconds, the Hero could hold her breath no longer.
Face gone blue-purple from the effort, she had no choice but to open her mouth and draw a deep breath.
The next second, the Hero's color shifted from blue-purple to flushed crimson, and she toppled to the ground with a thud, low, coy moans spilling ceaselessly from her lips...
Huh? Why did this one's reaction look so much like Ningning's?
Before Baiye could puzzle it out, the same panting reached her from beyond the pollen cloud in the distance—
Biluo swayed unsteadily, barely keeping her feet, eyes fixed this way, hazy and dazed, a besotted look on her face; she too, it seemed, had unluckily fallen victim.
But hadn't Biluo dodged clear a moment ago?
Could the pollen cloud's coverage be larger than she'd imagined?
What now? By her family's secret teachings, this kind of dust attack could be detonated with fire, but they were standing inside the dust cloud themselves. Set it off, and they'd absolutely go down with it.
Just as she was frantic with worry, Baiye suddenly heard a few sounds at her side.
But this time it wasn't Ningning-style coquettish panting; it was the crisp rap of knuckles on a blackboard.
At some unknown moment Leilei had come to her side, and now held up her little blackboard, expression perfectly normal, and asked Baiye:
『What should I do next?』
Baiye's eyes went wide, unable to fathom why, in this pollen cloud where one slip meant falling victim, Leilei alone could stay unaffected.
Leilei seemed to read Baiye's confusion, and so wiped the magic script from her blackboard and wrote anew:
『I'm pretty good at concealing my own presence... in everyday life I hold my breath all the time. Not for very long, but ten-odd minutes is no problem.』
Ten-odd minutes?!
This kid seemed better cut out for the assassin role than she was.
Grumbling inwardly, Baiye gestured for Leilei to use wind magic to blow the pollen cloud away.
Leilei nodded and immediately unleashed wind magic, driving the pollen cloud that shrouded them off behind her.
But the moment they broke free of the cloud, Baiye dropped the scrap of cloth in her hand and shouted at Leilei:
"Leilei, are you insane?! Why blow the pollen cloud toward the city? More people will fall victim!"
Leilei snapped to her senses about the foolish thing she'd done. Face aghast, ears drooping, she apologized over and over:
『I-I-I-I-I was wrong, I'm sorry!!』
"Save the self-reproach for later. Now blow the pollen cloud onto Anawen, then hit the cloud with a fire spell!"
『Huh? Why...? Okay, no problem!』
Leilei asked nothing further, gathered her mana again, and used wind magic to return the pollen cloud to Anawen, who was still shaking her head nonstop.
Perhaps because of her poor eyesight, Anawen, the upper half of her body now shrouded in the pollen cloud, still hadn't noticed how dire her situation had become, and just kept on wagging her head.
"Now! Light it up!"
Leilei moved at the word, swinging her little blackboard, and a searing white fireball came screaming out, striking dead-on into the pale-pink pollen cloud that the wind had just carried to Anawen's side, not yet dispersed.
In that instant, time seemed to freeze.
And then—
BOOM!!!
A dull yet deeply penetrating implosion tore through everyone's eardrums.
Starting from the point where the fireball made contact, the pale-pink pollen cloud suddenly flared a blinding orange-red, the whole cloud clenching as if in the grip of an invisible giant hand, then violently swelling outward!
A visible wave of scorching shock spread in a sphere, slamming hard into Anawen's enormous green head and outstretched vines.
"Wuuu—!!!"
Anawen let out a shriek unlike any before, mingling agony and shock.
That pink flower atop her head, swaying gaily and scattering pollen, bore the brunt of it. Its tender petals curled instantly in the heat and force, then charred black and shattered, piece by piece.
Her once-verdant, lustrous body and leaves scorched into wide swaths of withered yellow, then carbonized.
Most piteous of all were her vines, flailing everywhere.
The few nearest the blast's center were snapped clean off and set alight, tumbling down like great green torches ablaze.
Those a bit farther out escaped destruction, but their surfaces were covered in scorch marks, their movements gone sluggish and stiff, and they slumped limply to the ground.
The violent dust explosion even shook the city wall, countless stone fragments raining down.
The instant the shockwave hit, Baiye flew forward to shield the still-stunned Leilei, driving her twin blades into the wall and tanking the shock by sheer force.
Scorching air currents swept over their heads, carrying a strange, bizarre smell, burnt char mingled with flower fragrance.
After who-knew-how-long, the dust finally settled.
Baiye lifted her soot-blackened head, coughing and waving away the smoke before her, and looked toward Anawen.
The man-eating-flower maiden was a wretched sight now.
Over half her head had vanished, leaving only charred, smoking wreckage and a few pitiful, curled-up fragments.
A dozen-odd mangled vines drooped weakly along the wall, most of them burned, only a few still faintly twitching.
Anawen's massive body seemed to have shrunk a size too, its color gone dull, sprawled motionless on the wall, only the faint rise and fall at her chest testifying that she still lived.
"Did we take her down...?"
Baiye stood up and murmured, planting a flag under her breath.
『We probably did!』
Leilei gazed gratefully at Baiye, who'd fought to protect her through the blast, and drove the flag deeper still with her blackboard.
And of course, events unfolded exactly as one would expect.
Anawen's mangled body suddenly began to tremble violently, and her dull-toned skin took on a fresh emerald sheen once more.
Baiye was dumbstruck by this unforeseen turn.
Just as she stood there at a loss, the ever-disconnected Biluo finally opened that chatterbox of hers, which hid who-knew-what treasures:
"This Anawen is trying to resurrect! Once she's back she'll keep her memories, and she'll definitely be harder to deal with! We can't drag this out. Kill her now!"
At that, Baiye's gaze turned instantly fierce. She drew her twin blades and made to charge, only to suddenly stagger and drop to her knees again.
『Big Sis Baiye! You're bleeding so badly!』
Leilei hurriedly flung down her blackboard and rushed forward, but she was far too weak to lift the spent, strengthless Baiye at all.
The Hero was already down, her fate unknown.
Against so vast a body, and with no dust cloud to help, Leilei's magic was powerless too.
And Biluo, though she'd been firing arrows with all her might the whole time, had her strength in scouting, not attack, so it did pitifully little, utterly unable to halt Anawen's regeneration.
There was nothing to be done.
The dark clouds of despair gradually settled over everyone's hearts.
And at this critical juncture, a beam of white magic no one had foreseen suddenly shot out from within the city, its light enveloping the four exhausted fighters, pouring boundless, inexhaustible strength back into them with mana—
"Everyone! This is my last magic! Take it—"
Ningning's voice was both heroic and shrill.
Carrying the resolve of one who knew full well her own end was nigh, past all saving, yet still gave everything for the future, for hope.
Sending her final white magic.
Piercing through the pollen cloud flying straight at her, impossible to dodge.
Over to them.