He was the only one left from the unit.
Ranger Aida silently set up his rifle at the hasty sniper's nest he had chosen.
The task assigned by the Farseer must be completed.
He cast his gaze into the distance. His trained eyes, exceptionally sharp even among the Aeldari, could clearly see the mass of bobbing heads on the distant street. Picking out irrelevant details about those humans would be effortless.
He tried to steady his mind, to focus on his task, but he couldn't.
The unit that had come to this world through the webway was gone. He was the only one left.
He had no vehicle now, no support, no comrades. This shouldn't be terrifying. He was a Ranger, a Pathfinder. He should have long been accustomed to operating alone, wandering the stars with scarce supplies. He was highly skilled, and should have been able to excel in any situation.
But he was afraid—not of the enemy he faced, but of the fact that he had yet to successfully identify the enemy at all.
The Farseer might have been able to see through this bloody mist, but she was the first to die in the team. At that time, she had Aspect Warriors guarding her, and she herself was a skilled combatant. They had just stealthily emerged from the webway gate; no one expected anything to go wrong. But, in just a moment of inattention, a coincidence where everyone happened to be looking away from that direction, and the Farseer vanished from where she should have been.
No one figured out how it happened. This put them on alert, and they cautiously tried to search the area for any suspicious traces, but found nothing. Until five minutes later, the Farseer reappeared as silently as she had vanished.
In a broken and profane manner.
This threw the team into brief disarray. The other members began to argue. They couldn't pinpoint how this had happened, nor could they decide whether to continue the mission. As far as the Ranger himself was concerned, he was certain this was an ominous portent: unrelated to the shifting tides of fate in the Warp, simply because it clearly indicated the presence of an unknown and powerful entity nearby that was not friendly to their arrival.
He believed that whether they advanced or retreated, they should leave this place of trouble as soon as possible. He made the suggestion. At that time, the team was tense but still rational, so the correct suggestion was quickly agreed upon. They had to spend a little time recovering the Farseer's spirit stone—finding the correct location of the spirit stone amidst a pile of indistinguishable blood, minced flesh, and armor fragments was more difficult than they had imagined—then, they formed up to leave, and during the headcount, discovered two more people were missing.
The team, lacking a decisive leader, erupted into fiercer argument. Some believed they should search for their missing comrades, or at least recover their spirit stones. Others believed this proved the place was unwelcoming, and they should leave immediately.
Regardless, this event once again demonstrated the severity of the situation to everyone. The second argument was therefore more intense but also briefer. After only thirty-four seconds, they decided to continue the mission and move forward, leaving the hidden cavern where the webway gate was located. But when they reached the exit of the cavern, they found the two missing members of the team.
They were impaled on poles, bloodied and battered, their limbs crushed, flesh torn open to expose the bones beneath, their abdominal cavities sliced open, organs removed and then deliberately twistedly placed back into incorrect positions, their faces skinned, eyes gouged out. There were signs of struggle on their bodies; clearly, they were still alive when they endured all this. All the companions mourned the tragic fate of these two kin and recovered their spirit stones. Then they prepared to mount their vehicles and set off—
—This time, four people were missing from the team.
It was very obvious, because two Windrider jetbikes were left sitting idle, all alone.
They finally felt panic. This time, they didn't engage in futile arguments or wait; they chose to depart immediately. They jumped onto their vehicles and charged into the vast plains of Jestaal. They fully expected this would shake off the unknown monster, but—
The Ranger took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.
Now only he was left.
In this situation, his reason for choosing to continue the mission was actually simple and practical: his vehicle was destroyed, and he was clearly much closer to the mission objective than to the webway gate. He judged his survival rate of returning would be very low.
Truth be told, if he insisted on completing the mission, his survival rate obviously didn't look much better either, but at least he could successfully eliminate a variable for the future. He didn't think he feared death, but he was terrified that his life would vanish so without rhyme or reason. Before that, he would be unable to pass the information and intelligence back to his home Craftworld, and unable to successfully complete the task entrusted by the Farseer.
Driven by this fear, he raised his Ranger long rifle and took precise aim at the distant crowd.
Before coming to this land of death, everyone in the team had shared a vague vision from the Farseer: a young human girl, orange hair, short stature. This was the dangerous source they must eliminate—he didn't know why an seemingly ordinary human girl would become a "dangerous source," but he trusted the Farseer's judgment. That was enough. For the galaxy, he must do this.
The girl stood defenselessly on the edge of the crowd, staying in place, solely focused on talking to her friend. He knew the girl was completely unaware of him, a kilometer away.
This task should have been as easy as turning over a hand. He thought. Then he forced himself to calm down once more.
The weather was clear and mild, visibility was good, no haze or suspended dust in the air that could cause light refraction, the slight breeze couldn't interfere with the trajectory of an energy weapon. Ranger Aida breathed in softly, out, in—He realized this position wasn't a foolproof sniper's nest: too close, too exposed, prone to revealing his position. But he believed his thoroughly tempered and perfected skills could compensate for these minor flaws.
If you can take down the enemy with one shot, of course you don't need to consider what to do if they choose to counterattack.
Ranger Aida gave himself one final order to be calm, focused, and then concentrated his consciousness entirely on the single act of aiming.
One second later, he pulled the trigger.
——
+He's about to take the shot.+
+Understood.+
——
Fujimaru Ritsuka pushed Elita aside.
She had faced the Aeldari in simulations; she knew how fast they could be. Relying solely on her own abilities, she could only barely track their rapid movements with her eyes—and that was eyesight trained under the guidance of many Servants at Chaldea.
Savera ran off with the girl. At the same moment, Fujimaru Ritsuka knew she couldn't overpower this opponent on her own.
Even just one, the Aeldari were still dangerous.
Atlas Foundation Chassis Exoskeleton·Activate--
Human Order Foundation·Connection——
Spiritron Portrait·Selection--
Established Concept·Upload——
Hypothesis Proof·Complete-
——This won't make it in time!
Cyan-green light flowed like breath through the seams of the exoskeleton. The premonition honed by long experience lingering between life and death screamed in her mind. Fujimaru Ritsuka decisively chose to follow her roaring intuition, slightly altering the magecraft about to form:-
Aether Construction·Projection——
Concept Extraction: The Small World that Encompasses the Sky (Akhilleus Kosmos)-
A round shield materialized from the void. In that instant, the grips and straps naturally and tightly conformed to her hand and arm. She followed her instinct and raised her arm to the right, feeling a slight vibration in the very next moment.
The sensation was different from what she had expected, but it didn't matter. Fujimaru Ritsuka had this confidence.
Achilles's shield was an extremely small reproduction of a world crafted by the smith god Hephaestus's exquisite skill. As a defensive armament holding the concept of a "world," its defensive power was undoubtedly top-tier. Even without deploying it in a magical sense, its physical defense as a Noble Phantasm could rival that of a world. And what it was now meant to defend against would most likely be unable to pierce it.
No matter how strong the penetrating power of monomolecular crystals or wires might be, they were ultimately mass-produced infantry weapons for army deployment. Such infantry weapons naturally could not destroy an entire world.
However, although there were no problems with the defense, the feedback from the shield told Fujimaru Ritsuka that she had not been hit by either of those two weapons.
A faint scream of panic rose from the crowd. Fujimaru Ritsuka immediately lowered the shield blocking her view, checking her surroundings and searching for the enemy's position. This action first led her to the source of the crowd's scream: it wasn't that an alien that shouldn't appear in the city was brazenly present, but that a heavy sculpture on the third-floor exterior wall of a building to her side and front had been abruptly severed in most of its load-bearing structures by some force, now dangling precariously with a dangerous sound of cracking stone.
It won't hit anyone. Fujimaru Ritsuka judged. The crowd had already begun to push and shove slightly to avoid it, but since the situation seemed under control, no one was panicking excessively. She therefore didn't need to consider rescue, allowing her to focus on the melted-looking break, and then find a poison needle and some slight scorch marks beside it on the surface of the shield in her hand.
An energy weapon, paired with a poison needle. She thought calmly amidst the boiling noise of the crowd. The poison needle remained on the shield; the energy was deflected elsewhere due to the reflectivity of the smooth shield surface. That's how it happened. And an Aeldari weapon that fit this description—
Fujimaru Ritsuka looked into the distance. The slight impact the poison needle had imparted to the shield perfectly marked the trajectory for her.
Through her magically enhanced eyes, she saw the figure of the Aeldari Ranger.
——
——This is impossible!
The Aeldari Ranger stared in shock at the unharmed girl in the distance, and the shield that had somehow appeared in her hand.
How did she react in advance? How did she know when I would pull the trigger? Where did that shield come from? She—
——She's found this position!
This wasn't a foolproof sniper's nest, but being discovered by the opponent this quickly exceeded his expectations. He knew he should relocate now, move to the next sniper's nest, but if he did that, clearly, his target would blend into the crowd, gone without a trace. The Ranger was alone; there was no Farseer to point out the target's possible location for him—besides, so what if he was discovered? That human girl clearly had no long-range shooting weapon!
If he could still think calmly, he would certainly realize the target had just inexplicably produced a shield; if he could still think calmly, he would certainly adopt a more cautious and secure strategy, but he couldn't. He didn't know when that无形的杀戮怪物 (invisible killing monster) would catch up to him, and he arrogantly believed this task should have been simple—
He therefore made the wrong decision: he would pull the trigger again from this very spot.
——
Aether Construction·Confirm——
Warp Entity·Generate--
Spiritron Embed·Commence--
Login Serial No.·No. 60 Orion-
Goddess of the Moon, please lend me your strength.
——
What—what was she taking out? That was… a bow? What did she intend to do with that inefficient, museum-piece weapon?
The Aeldari Ranger felt puzzled.
This was his final thought before he perished in a mid-air explosion comparable to a ballistic missile.
(Author's note: I wrote some setting-related ramblings in the relevant section. Not reading them doesn't affect understanding.)