"Damn it!"
"First shot!"
When that slender red line shot out from beneath the pale yellow phantom of a rocky hill and struck one of the Big Crows in the flock, two voices rang out almost simultaneously from a second-story loft facing the street not far from the battlefield.
Five Humanoid Crows were crammed into the not-so-spacious room. Some sat around the tea table in the center, some leaned against the wooden wall by the door, while others reclined half-lounging on the narrow wooden bed.
The speakers were the two crows whose masks bore the numbers Nine and Thirteen. Number Nine stood by the window, holding a compact Brass Telescope, his voice carrying a trace of frustration. Number Thirteen held a clipboard in one hand and a Quill Pen in the other, head lowered as he made notes, his tone exceptionally calm.
They were commenting on the same thing.
The former was cursing because one of the Sandbox Small World's nodes had been discovered by the three young wizards.
The latter was recording the fact that the target had just expended the first of those extremely threatening talisman bullets. According to the crows' internal statistical analysis, there should have been very few of those immensely destructive bullets, and using them should also place a heavy burden on the talisman gun. To be safe, their original plan had called for them to exhaust three to five of the enemy's bullets through various means before the two sides formally clashed.
Yet those young wizards had remained unexpectedly composed.
From the moment they accidentally fell into the Sandbox World, to when they came under attack from the flock, all the way until now, the target had fired only the first of those high-powered talisman bullets—and with a single shot, he had hit one