The Beast of the Black Hills (Elemental Gunslinger, Book 2) - A Wild West Cultivation Story by Jonathan Smidt

Author:Jonathan Smidt [Smidt, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Portal Books
Published: 2026-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Six

“How the hell did you just do that, boy?” Clint asked as he looked from the frozen creature to me.

I said nothing. Partly because I had nothing to say, and partly because I knew it wasn’t over. I could ‘feel’ the mana around the creature. Just as I was connected to my air bullets, so too was I connected now to my water mana rounds. I could feel the thick ice that had formed around the creature. Therefore, I could also feel that very mana quickly fading back into both the world, and more concerning, a part of it being corrupted and absorbed by the creature. I only had a few more seconds before it would break free.

While this wasn’t a permanent solution, at the very least I knew it could buy us what I truly needed. Time.

Without speaking, I fired another shot just as I felt the ice giving way. Even as the loud cracking of the ice pillar shattering filled the night sky, another ice round collided with the creature’s chest. It didn’t even have time to let out an annoyed scream before it was frozen solid again.

I cracked the lever on my rifle, ejecting the remaining whisps of water mana, before loading another round into the weapon. I glanced from Clint to Emma. I could keep buying time, but I had a new problem.

“My rifle can’t handle much more of this,” I said grimly. “And I doubt it will survive the next step of my plan.”

“And what step is that?” Clint asked, still eyeing me with more than a little distrust.

Well, maybe not distrust. But he was definitely giving me a critical eye. It was only fair, I knew. After all, I’d just shown him that I could use a third type of mana. I was pretty sure if I showed him I could use all four that the old man would die from a heart attack before the creature got to us.

“I‘m going to use what you taught me,” I said grimly, motioning towards the frozen creature, “to try and just completely destroy it. Since the normal ways of killing don’t seem to work”—I shrugged— “figured I could at least try to completely erase it in a single go.”

Clint nodded, his eyes thoughtful. “It could work.”

He looked at his own rifle. He’d not fired it since I’d frozen the creature, but the Soul-Silver filigree along the weapon still glowed faintly. We’d both been putting a lot of mana through our weapons. And even though the weapons were reinforced, they still had their limits.

“If we tried with either of our rifles, best case scenario, just the weapon gets destroyed,” he said grimly. “Worst case scenario, if you do what you say you’re going to do…”

“Won’t matter if we kill the creature or not, we’d still be dead.”

Overloading a weapon with mana could cause it to explode. The Soul-Silver could only handle so much before it would rupture, and depending on the amount of mana passing through

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.