Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

Chapter 178: Soldier's fate (part 9)

Ophar only had one chance.

And yet, before he could use it, a devastating shot befell him, bringing an end to a long streak of not being the target.

'FUUUCK!'

Feeling his body burn and boil while sharp scraps of metal cut his skin all over the place, Ophar felt as if his body was starting to breathe in those flames.

And then, as abruptly as it all began, the torture came to an end.

His outer barrier shattered, letting the condensed flames out, giving them somewhere else to expand then right on top of Ophar's inner barrier.

His inner barrier was devastated, pierced in thousand if not more spots… But it held. And while here and there the powerful flames of the explosion would seep into those gaps and burn his flesh directly, given the qualities of the air-barrier, the rest of his flesh simply cooked when the fires heated up the stabilized air.

Ophar's aura reached its exhaustion. His body reached its final step. And although he survived, he had nothing else left.

For the major, the battle was now over.

'As if!'

The hateful figure of the young man turned to watch as he burned alive…

For some, unexplainable reason, it synchronized with Ophar's aura. Just looking at him invoked some unknown reserves of energy in the man as he associated this hateful look with the sense of wrath and powerlessness he felt when his soldiers dropped dead one after the other, unable to defend themselves or retaliate in any way.

'Not yet! Not just yet!'

Refusing to give up while that close to taking down this one dreadful enemy, Ophar reached out to his belt and grabbed his second, private crutch.

Contrary to the military-issued one, his private crutch was ordered from one of the best craftsmen in the empire. And without a shred of a doubt, just like Ophar's barriers were several grades above what his soldiers had, this private crutch of his was just below the level of what the imperial family always carried on them.

Thankfully, the young man took Ophar's attempts at crushing the crutch to some wiggling and pain-induced tremors. Then, with the crazed look momentarily easing on the young man's face, he raised his gun back to his shoulder, ready to fire…

'NOW!'

Pressing the crutch against his chest and feeling first tingles of the refreshing energy bursting into his mangled flesh… Ophar gathered all of his strength and leaped forward.

Pushing his body to the absolute limit, he actively converted the healing factor within the crutch's stored aura into raw strength. Faster, quicker, swifter.

In this one moment, that was all that mattered.

Mid-leap, Ophar swung his axe, aiming for a simple, brutal decapitation strike.

The young man failed to react in time. By the time he even noticed the attack, Ophar got close enough to ensure the strike would be successful. All that was left, was for the blade to cut through this few more inches of air. Three more. Two more…

And by some miracle… the young man pushed his body back and stretched out his head in just the one possible angle that allowed him to avoid anything more than just a tiny, shallow scrape on the skin of his throat.

'Shit!'

The energy within Ophar's crutch was perfectly designed to heal his body and keep the aftereffects as shallow as possible. Yet, when the man used this energy to power his body beyond its limits instead…

Carried by the force of his swing, Ophar could no longer control the moment of his body. And with the axe still in his hand, his body simply followed its momentum and then fell to the ground.

'Now, I'm done.'

Ophar's soul didn't scream in frustration. It didn't feel like grief, anger, or sadness. At most, he only felt a hint of disappointment.

'I did all I could, held nothing back, went above and beyond…' he thought, his mind quickly giving in to the new wave of the overwhelming pain.

And with no further crutches on hand, it was likely to be a final one too.

'Even if I scavenged, by chance, someone else's crutch, it wouldn't work…' Ophar thought, his mind automatically trying to search for a way out.

But after using a normal and then an extremely powerful crutch… Ophar knew the effects of any other would be greatly diminished. The effects would be too weak for him to recover, not to speak about getting into the shape suitable for fighting this monster of a young man.

"It's a shame, it really is," the young man spoke as he calmly approached Ophar's bleeding and utterly exhausted body.

The weapon he held changed to a much more robust one.

'At least it looks like I managed to force his hand a bit too,' he thought when, after the greatest effort of turning his eyes, he saw the sorry state the young man was in.

There was no sign of the perfectly clean and composed guy from before. The man who stood above him was covered in tiny, long wounds that continued to seep blood. Wounds the kind of Ophar has never seen before.

But by now, it didn't matter.

"It's a shame, but such is a soldier's fate," the young man spoke with the same, calm expression that he had throughout the entire encounter while raising the front of his robust gun straight to Ophar's face.

'I did all I could. Now, I can finally rest,' Ophar relaxed his body, trying to cheat his mind out of sensing the pain, even if only for a single moment.

And in doing so, his head fell back down to the ground. His eyes moved along, from the young man's face, through his body, the dark pipe of his gun, the royal guards charging at him from behind, the corpses all over the ground, blood seeping into the earth…

'Wait…'

Knowing it was likely the last thing he would do, Ophar once again ignored the overwhelming pain and raised his eyes…

Only to see lightning strike the ground before everything turned white.