The Last Alchemist

On Earth, vultures can smell rotten meat from dozens of kilometers away.

In this world, ghouls are even more sensitive to rotten meat. Once a corpse is exposed in the wild for more than one hour, the smell will be smelled by ghouls within a radius of nearly 100 miles.

If the sky is gloomy, or it is dark, the ghouls will rush to the corpse scene like sharks smelling blood.

Ghouls even have a nickname, called "battlefield scavengers".

Now, Rosen's carriage is in the wasteland, and there are more than 20 corpses lying more than 40 meters in front of the carriage. The sun has set, and the arrival of ghouls is completely expected.

Rosen no longer cares about checking the scene. He immediately turned around and strode back to the carriage.

He was already running at full speed, but his speed was still not fast enough. Less than 10 meters away, there was a sudden sound in the grass on the left side of his body, and a black shadow with a pungent stench rushed towards him.

Rosen didn't have time to think about it. The muzzle of the spiral spray gun turned suddenly, and the alchemical power wrapped around the lead azide in the bullet and stimulated it.

"Bang!"

The explosion and the fire appeared at the same time, and a large number of steel balls erupted from the barrel and hit the black shadow.

"Puff~~" A muffled sound of bullets entering the flesh, the ghoul was less than 2 meters away from Rosen. At such a close distance, its body almost completely bore the impact of the spiral spray gun.

The ghoul that was falling in the air was knocked back to the bushes by the huge impact force, and never stood up again.

Why?

Because one of the most likely monsters to encounter in the wilderness is the ghoul, Rosen was naturally prepared for this. He deliberately mixed silver nitrate, a drug that restrains ghouls, into the bullet.

Once silver nitrate enters the body of the ghoul, it can quickly release silver ions into the ghoul's body fluids. The toxic effect of silver ions can cause the ghoul to go into shock and lose its ability to move in an instant. After three minutes, the ghoul will be poisoned and die.

In fact, silver and its compounds can restrain most monsters in this world. For this reason, silver is also called sacred metal by the Fire God Cult.

After killing a ghoul, Rosen continued to run forward.

Unexpectedly, he had just started, and before he could retract the spiral spray gun in his left hand, he heard Annie shouting at him again: "Be careful!"

At the same time, Rosen heard a strange sound from the left side of his body.

'A vampire sneaked up on me from the left, and I'm afraid my big spray gun won't be able to turn back in time! '

In a flash, he saw a black shadow flying out of the bushes with his left eye, less than one meter away from Rosen.

"Ah!" Annie shouted in horror.

She immediately took out her musket and prepared to aim and shoot, but the moment she picked up the gun, she knew that time was too tight, and she didn't have time to aim at anything, and the probability of hitting the ghoul would be very low.

At this moment, Rosen suddenly stretched out his left hand to the ghoul, activated the power of alchemy, and launched a defensive magic: air cannon!

This air cannon was very strange. Rosen did not condense the air to the extreme, but gathered a large amount of air in a space with a diameter of about 30 cm on the left side of his body, and then pushed the air out violently.

‘Buzz~’

The air made a muffled sound, and a violent airflow appeared, hitting the ghoul in mid-air fiercely.

“Bang~”

The ghoul was actually blown by this airflow and his body was stopped.

The reason for this is that although the ghoul is swift and powerful, it has a flaw, that is, it is too light, about the same weight as an ordinary human boy of 14 or 15 years old. When it jumps in mid-air, the impact force is not great, and it is easy to be disturbed by the sudden force. Balance.

“Defend against arrows!” Rosen made another move.

Another airflow appeared, pushing the ghoul in mid-air backwards.

The force of this airflow is not too strong or too weak, and the direction is also very clever. It blows diagonally upwards, part of the force keeps the ghoul floating in the air, and the other small force ensures that the ghoul falls slowly backwards.

From a distance, the ghoul looked like a feather floating in the air, light and fluttering.

"Annie!" Rosen shouted.

Annie understood. She had already raised the Sky-Destroyer and aimed. Now the ghoul was slowly falling backwards, and it was a good time to kill him.

She aimed slightly and pulled the trigger.

"Bang~"

The muzzle flashed, and the ghoul that was knocked back by the airflow suddenly had a fist-sized blood hole on its head, and its entire face was almost shot off.

The vitality of ghouls is much stronger than that of humans, but far less than that of vampires and werewolves. With such a big hole in their heads, they died directly.

After firing the gun, Annie felt that the girl she was supporting trembled violently, as if she was frightened by the Sky-Destroyer. She quickly comforted her: "Girl, don't be afraid, don't be afraid. We are all good people and only deal with monsters."

"Hmm~" The black-haired girl lowered her head and responded softly.

Perhaps the previous attack was too shocking, and until Rosen ran back to the carriage, he was not attacked by the ghouls again.

Anne was already waiting for him beside the carriage.

"How is the girl?" Rosen asked.

"In the carriage, Mary is treating her wounds. Don't worry, she is fine."

"Well, that's good." Rosen looked at the location of the wrecked carriage in front of him.

In just a moment, more than 20 ghouls appeared there, and ghouls kept jumping out from the bushes on the roadside.

These ghouls are about 1.5 meters tall and humanoid. Their bodies are covered with mucus similar to thick snot. The color of their muscles looks like rotten meat. Even from a distance, you can still smell the pungent stench of decay from them.

The ghouls devour the corpses very wildly. They directly pounce their heads into the corpses and bite them with big mouthfuls. The air echoes with the "crunching" sound of them chewing the flesh and bones of the corpses, which is very creepy.

The coachman John was shaking all over like a sieve. If Rosen and Annie were not standing next to him, he would have turned the carriage around and ran away early.

"My lord, what should we do now?" John asked with a sad face.

Rosen frowned, "There are so many ghouls. Annie, have you ever seen such a situation before?"

Annie shook her head slightly, "No, I've only seen 15 at most at one time, but there are at least 30 here, and there are still ghouls rushing here. Could it be because this is a war zone and there is too much food?"

"It's possible." Rosen nodded, and then said quickly, "It's not safe here anymore. We may be attacked at any time if we stay nearby. The carriage will turn around and retreat, and hide for a while."

Ghouls are a bit like African hyenas. They can eat carrion, but if they see living things, they don't mind eating a little more, and once they set their sights on them, they will fight to the death. Unless the prey is too powerful and the cost of hunting far exceeds the harvest, they will give up the pursuit.

So, once these ghouls eat up the corpses, they will definitely try to attack the carriage. With so many ghouls, there will definitely be a fierce battle tonight!

John had been waiting for this sentence, and immediately drove the carriage to turn around. After the carriage turned around, he whipped the horse whip, and the horse neighed and pulled the carriage to run wildly along the way it came.

Neither Rosen nor Annie entered the carriage. They stood on the specially installed stand next to the carriage, holding weapons in their hands and on guard.

Behind the carriage, the number of ghouls increased to more than 40, and they fought desperately for the flesh and blood of the corpses. From time to time, two ghouls would fight for the ownership of the flesh and blood. They screamed "ji~ji~ji" and bit each other. Once a ghoul was crippled, it immediately became food for other ghouls.

The terrifying monster, the blood and flesh fragments flying all over the sky, and the dense sound of bones cracking, was simply a picture of a devil's banquet.

What's more terrifying is that even so, ghouls continued to jump out of the bushes, their number increased rapidly, and the corpses on the ground decreased rapidly.

Anne whispered, "At this speed, in no more than a quarter of an hour, all the bodies, human and horse, will be eaten up!"

Rosen pondered for a few seconds and said, "In a quarter of an hour, even if the horse runs at full speed, it can only run five or six miles, and it will also run out of horsepower. What we should do most now is to find a good place to build a defensive position and prepare for war."

Annie nodded, "You are right."

After driving for about another 3 minutes, Rosen suddenly pointed to the side of the road: "John, go to the slope over there, quickly!"

"Okay." John pulled the reins, and the carriage quickly rushed out of the muddy road and rushed to a slope about 30 meters away from the roadside.

This slope is actually a huge rock, the highest place in the surrounding area. The terrain is gentle on the east side of the slope, while on the west side is a rock fault about 5 meters high. With a little arrangement, it is a place that is easy to defend and difficult to attack.

After the carriage reached the top of the rock, Rosen jumped off the carriage first: "Annie, set up the formation!"

"Understood!"

Annie also jumped off the carriage, then ran quickly to the back of the carriage, moved a large box down from the rear of the carriage, opened it, and inside were silver-white metal spikes, divided into five groups, each group can be easily unfolded into a stable triangle, one side of the triangle protrudes densely with cross-shaped spikes, a total of 12.

This is a thorn horse guardrail, made of high-strength aluminum alloy, with a hard texture and light weight. Rosen specially built it for the purpose of constructing a temporary position as quickly as possible.

Annie held a group of spikes and pulled it hard. There was only a "clatter" sound of metal crispness, and the aluminum alloy spikes unfolded. The shape was exactly the same as the wooden thorn horse guardrail of this era, but the defense and power were much greater.

She inserted five groups of thorn horses on the east side of the carriage in a semicircle, just surrounding the carriage. On the steep and difficult side, a hole was deliberately left, and the rest was sealed.

In this way, the ghouls can certainly jump over the thorn horse guardrail, but their speed will inevitably be greatly limited, and they will be scratched by the aluminum alloy spikes.

With the low intelligence of the ghouls, they will instinctively choose to attack from the gap, and in the gap, the ghouls will have to face the powerful muskets in the hands of Rosen and Annie.

During this time, Rosen was not idle.

He first took out a small box from the luggage rack behind the carriage and opened it. The box was filled with cotton wool, and there were fist-sized iron lumps mixed in the cotton wool. There were more than 30 of them.

Rosen took out 6 iron lumps first, handed them all to Annie, and instructed: "Annie, wait for the ghouls to come towards us. If they are in groups and the formation is tight, then you throw this thing at them. Remember, you must throw it 40 meters away. If the ghouls are close to you, give up this weapon to avoid accidental injury. Do you understand?"

"I know." Anne nodded. She was very aware of the great power of these things. When she took the iron lump, she was very careful.

Rosen took out another can of thick yellow grease like lard and poured it along the spurs. Especially on the spurs, he deliberately poured more. After pouring a circle, he wrapped a layer of oil-soaked cotton cloth on the spikes of the spurs, and then poured another layer of grease on the oilcloth.

Finally, he lit a torch and stuck it on the torch rack beside the carriage.

After doing all this, Rosen picked up the spiral spray gun again, refilled the bullets just fired, and then pressed the spiral magazine with a "click".

"Everything is ready, just waiting for the ghouls to come and die."

"Rosen, you must be careful later." Anne took a deep breath, her heart beating hard.

She has been a hunter for nearly two years, and she has always avoided large groups of ghouls from a distance. This is the first time she has faced a head-on confrontation like today. Although she is very well prepared, she still doesn't have much confidence in her heart.

Rosen responded, "I understand. You should be careful too."

Then the two of them leaned against the carriage, holding muskets in their hands, and quietly waited for the ghouls.