Hint from the Death Element

"Shooting practice?! We are under fire! Get off the walls and follow evacuation procedures! Low-ranking soldiers and civilians have no business here!"

The soldier shouted while holding his head down to avoid the occasional stray bullets.

"Well, I just got a good shot off and damaged their leader through their barrier so I think I'm doing quite good!"

Mitsuna replied with a raised voice as the deafening gunfire slowly faded.

"What?!"

The soldier shouted in question to confirm that he hadn't heard her wrong.

"Yeah! Now get over it, they're reloading!"

Mitsuna shouted back as she stood on her knees and placed her gun on the fence while scanning the area, seeing that the enemy was confused and had momentarily stopped attacking, she took the moment as an advantage and fired bullet after bullet.

Getting a good few shots off and hitting 12 out of her 14 shots, she noticed that the entire platoon had all taken out some weird high-tech revolver and were aiming at the wall.

Feeling a tingling sense of danger, she placed her gun back on her back and was about to jump behind the wall for whatever extra cover she could get.

'I don't know if the wall will survive whatever barrage will come this way but I can at least reinforce it a slight bit with earth magic.'

She quickly thought as she turned and was about to leap off the wall before a hand stopped her descent.

Pulling her back up onto the crumbling and cracked wall, the previous soldier refused to let the random blue-haired sniper girl escape before she explained exactly who she was.

"You won't get away that easily, what is your rank soldier?!"

"No rank, yet to register. Now how about escaping the damage zone before the wall is disintegrated or whatever that enemy platoon is planning."

Mitsuna replied with a slightly raised voice as she gestured to the huge amount of gathering mana.

Before the soldier could even say another word, an orchestra of explosions rang out as the two went silent and looked towards the sandy desert.

Space seemed to warp around the horizon as the distortion in the air grew ever closer.

Snapping out of her momentary gaze, she saw how the platoon of enemies was retreating.

"They're retreating."

She muttered as she glanced back at the volley of death that approached the wall, interestingly enough, she could see the bullets tearing away at each other.

"Shit. I am not done with asking questions, sniper. We retreat and prepare a counterattack immediately, you will be detained until the situation is taken care of."

The soldier said while slowly moving away from the fence cover of the wall and dragging Mitsuna with him as they approached the edge.

Jumping down after one last glance at the enemy, while still grabbing Mitsuna's hand, in the middle of the fall, he looked up as Mitsuna's weight was much lighter than he had expected he felt no resistance from her as they fell towards the ground.

Though, as an interesting surprise, Mitsuna was not there and the soldier was only holding her removed and still bleeding hand.

With a slight look of horror on his face he reached the ground with a loud thud as he raised the bleeding hand up and away from him.

"What the fuck? Did a bullet just erase her?"

Back on top of the wall, Mitsuna ignored her slowly healing hand and the blood on her sleeve as she simply gazed at the oncoming volley of bullets that seemed many times smaller compared to before.

'A regular bullet would have reached here already. Seems like they sacrificed speed for destructive power. But that isn't the Space element that is pulsing out of the bullet. At least, not entirely.'

She took a few steps forward as she jumped on the cracking stone fence.

'It is familiar to some degree... now that I look at its mana flow and colour again, it seems familiar.'

Finally, a single bullet reached the wall some 10 metres below her location as it ate at the stone and reduced it to dust.

'I know this element. But it's impossible for an entire battalion to have access to it without a bullet crafter who utilises it.

My curiosity is peaked.'

The wall under her cracked and broke as a large portion of the wall, including the fence and her foothold crumbled under her.

The portion of the stone fence that previously acted as her cover and now as her foothold still floated there, not connected to anything as Mitsuna stood on a section of the floating stone fence, shards and pieces of stone slowly floating down towards the ground.

'Seems the bullets destroy themselves after sufficient travel and time with the element activated.

So if I get one that hasn't been destroyed, I can study it.'

Mitsuna thought as she reached out her hand.

A bullet was making its way towards her general location, so a wave of her hand and a quick Gravity spell altered its course and pulled it towards her hand.

Catching the bullet in her hand and clutching it in her fist she stopped the rotation of the bullet but the spell engraved on it was still activated as it slowly tore her skin and flesh off her hand and gathered it towards the bullet's centre before slowly turning it to dust.

Gathering a good amount of mana, she stopped the bullet in time as she then used wind to make it float in front of her.

The spell was still activated but was no longer within range of her body.

Looking at her hand that had caught the bullet, it was still turning to dust as the affected area was basically ripped to shreds and disintegrated.

Flooding her hand with mana, she narrowed her eyes as the mana flow that affected her only seemed to grow stronger.

So, she flooded her hand with even more mana, this time forcing the flow of disintegration backwards.

The effect lessened and disappeared a moment later.

With one of her hands cut off and another having been slowly disintegrated to the point that her finger muscles had snapped, she could barely move either arm.

*Sigh*

She looked at the bullet she had suspended in time and the spell that was carved into it.

'With the effect of the bullet on organic matter confirmed and its tenacity of even inflicting a debuff taken into account, I can confidently say that this is definitely the work of the Death Element. Natash has been here.'

Mitsuna concluded as she took a deep breath to calm herself.

'Looks like she might be working with the enemy too, and learned bullet crafting on top of that.'

She thought as she looked at the spell carved on the bullet that had a skull with cat ears etched on it.

'Another cat-eared death element user is stupidly unlikely. The mana itself is slightly familiar on top of that.'

She looked at her slowly regenerating hand and clutched it into a fist a few times.

'Painful.'

She scowled.

Editing the spell that was etched onto the bullet, she reduced its area of effect down to a millimetre around the bullet and stored it in her Inventory.

'I wonder if I can gain any resistance to it. The amount of death element in the spell is minute, overshadowed by the amount of space element that expands the area of effect and causes the suction effect for the spell.

Thanks to the amount of space element, I was able to edit it to some degree.'

Looking at the horizon and barely being able to make out the retreating army that was now no more than specks of dust in the air, she examined the battle that had taken place.

'Since I am now again able to use my space magic, it's confirmed that that group had either a skill user that stops all space magic in a defined area or an item of that sort.

I wonder if the skill or item would still be in effect, would it affect the bullets too? Were they already affected and weakened?'

"Ahh~, what a situation."

She dispelled her own thoughts while complaining to herself.

"Really can't enjoy my time here in the slightest, serious problems just pop out one after another~."

With an even more drastic lack of bullets and a soldier with a possibly high rank that she had to deal with, Mitsuna wasn't exactly happy with the near future that was approaching.

Even after she jumped off the mostly destroyed wall and greeted the previously mentioned soldier with a "Sup." only to have to deal with yelling, swearing and mostly questions, her thoughts kept going back to two of her own questions that floated in her head even as she bullied the soldier by joking about the situation.

'I finally found a clue about Natash.'

and

'Am I even strong enough to kill her yet?'

These were the two questions that kept her full attention away from the conversation at hand.

...

"Sir, as the plan did not involve any possible injuries or deaths, we have no healer classes to fix your wound currently."

A soldier reported to the leader who had lost two fingers and burned a portion of his lower face.

*Sigh*

Their leader sighed as he sat on his horse and slowly moved in front of their group.

"It's fine. The natural regeneration that comes with higher tiers and stats will take care of my damages to some extent.

How many recovery potions do we currently have in our stock? Also, did the soldiers manage to recover the dead bodies and weapons of the dead?"

The leader asked as he slowed his horse to a temporary stop.

The soldier also stopped in his tracks as he saluted.

"As we had already used a large amount of our higher grade recovery resources on our journey here, we now only have 80 potions that deal with mild healing and large stamina boosting. These are the most efficient healing items we have at present.

No soldiers were left behind. Everyone, dead and alive is still within our ranks, Sir."

"Understood. Go and bring 12 of the 80 potions here. Dismissed."

As the soldier left with a jog, the leader turned to the other high ranks around him.

"Gather your men and deploy the Void Inventory, we must make haste before any wandering reinforcements, adventurers or enemy platoons notice our presence."

He said with finality as the other leaders who also sat on their horses nodded before turning towards their own teams of soldiers before pulling out a cube of pure darkness and ordering everyone to gather in front of their generals.

The soldier returned to the leader and handed over the potions before dashing off towards his own group.

Watching on while drinking two potions and stretching his hands, he saw how tendrils of darkness rose from the cube and pushed each soldier into their own shadow before gathering those shadows into itself.

'The items created by the higher-ups are still as disturbing as ever. They send chills down my spine even after I've witnessed all the tests done on them.'

"Sir, all soldiers gathered."

"Then we proceed."

The leader turned as he and his group which was now multiple times smaller continued their retreat.

...

"-... and why the hell did you even cut your hand off, sniper?! Wouldn't just shaking me to let go have done enough?"

Meanwhile, back in the capital, Lemon, Mitsuna was being told off by the soldier she had met on the wall as many other soldiers around the area couldn't help but to listen in.

"So can I go now?"

Was the only thing Mitsuna said after all that as she rolled her eyes.