Dragon Princess Will Do Her Best To Prevent The World's Destruction

Chapter 55: Contradictory Kindness of A Young Girl

The narrow hallway echoed with the sound of gunfire as I emptied another of my spare magazines into the dark, an action that I was rather unhappy about. It was extremely wasteful and put extra pressure on my already dwindling ammo reserves, but it was necessary to keep the unknown assailants back at the entrance of the tunnel.

"Stop looking back!" I shouted at Isaac as I shoved him along. "Keep on moving!"

"H-how did you even know this place existed!?" Isaac yelled back as he kept on running forward just as I had instructed.

"Borrowed knowledge," I replied, firing another shot into the dark. "It's merely something I had read in the report of this academy in passing."

"I feel as if that is something that shouldn't be glossed over like that!?" Isaac chose rather odd timings to be annoying.

"You're noisy," I muttered as I continued running forward.

I stopped firing back, and as expected, they already started speeding down the tunnel. Quite silent at it too, since I couldn't hear their footsteps despite being in a perfect echo chamber. The only method of obtaining information I had on them was the miniature radar device I had received during one of my trips to the naval base. Speaking of which, it seems we have reached the end of the secret tunnel, if the reading on the radar was correct.

"Gah!" Isaac yelped as he stepped on air, falling downwards, but fortunately a loud splashing sound could be heard afterwards.

I had no time to be concerned for my classmate, for the beeping in my hands were growing shorter and shorter in intervals. They were approaching fast! In the same journey that took us a good ten minutes, they were already at half of that distance in ten seconds! As if it wasn't already confirmed before, they were elites of elites for lesser humans.

Left without a choice, I reached inside the inner pockets of my jacket to swap out my radar with an oval object, one that had a significant weight in my palms. Although I had never used one of these before, but following the instructions I pulled out the pin with considerable force. Releasing my tight grip on the trigger, I hurled it straight into the tunnel.

Although we were a good distance from the center of the detonation, I shouted to the drenched Isaac below me for safety sake, "Cast barrier magic over us!"

Despite Isaac was prone to complaints during tight situations, he still retained his ability to think quickly on his feet.

Isaac immediately called forth to the spirits in the air, "The lords of light, here we stand at the threshold of life. Come forth, and see us to the end of this road! <Lesser Ward>!"

While the barrier was still taking effect, I launched myself over the edge as well. Bringing my knees to my chest, I adopted a position to brace for the impact against the water surface. Just moments before the crash against the water, I heard a loud bang resound through the tight tunnels, before hundreds of shrapnel come ricocheting off the walls.

Much to our favor, most of the fragmentation bounced off Isaac's shield harmlessly. Although such weak barriers could never withstand a full explosion or direct small arms fire, it was still useful for blocking stray debris in situations like these.

"The explosion took out the tunnel ceiling. Although it isn't much, but we can afford to walk and take a breather for now," I explained as I pulled myself out of the water.

The two of us now ended up in some sort of tunnel complex, with a channel of water streaming in the middle of the tunnel. The water was far too clean and deep to be a sewer system, so I assumed it to be some sort of water distribution system. Of course, that was merely my assumption. My knowledge was rather limited, after all.