Expect a short break after this chapter. For the next few days, I'll be playing Jojo All Star Battle R in my spare time.
The first step to freeing Vah Rudania was ensuring it couldn't set off the volcano. To that end, Yunobo had led the adventurers to a bunker containing a cannon. "Oh, that's not good. Not good at all."
"What's not good?" Bernadetta asked, worrying.
"The bomb flowers are dead," Yunobo said. "We can't fire the cannon at Rudania without them!"
"What the heck are bomb flowers?" Caspar asked.
"Oh, right, you aren't from around here," Yunobo remembered. "Well, they're flowers that naturally produce nitromannite."
"We don't know what nitromannite is either," Edelgard told him.
"It's a compound made of oxygen and nitrogen ions..." Yunobo saw that the others' blank stares hadn't gotten any more understanding. "Never mind. The important thing is, it's explosive. The explosive force from the bomb is what fires the cannon ball at Rudania."
"So, what you're saying is, you need a bomb," Link realized. Using the Sheikah Slate, he summoned a Remote Bomb. "I've got one."
"You do? How powerful is it?" Yunobo asked.
"I don't really know how I would measure that..." Link admitted. Looking at the Remote Bomb rune, he actually saw a menu selection. He tapped it, and it showed a bunch of numbers. He showed them to Yunobo.
He didn't understand the numbers, but Yunobo did. "That's strong enough. In fact, this is pretty useful. Usually we have to guess how much explosive power the bomb flowers have."
After he loaded a cannonball into the cannon, he started aiming. He seemed nervous.
"You have done this before, right, Yunobo?" Edelgard asked.
"Well, I haven't fired this cannon specifically, but I have fired cannons like it," Yunobo said. "I just want to be sure we get this right. Rudania can get...testy, when we do this. Last time, the Boss got hurt pretty badly. And you humans break easily."
Bernadetta went pale. "We're all gonna die."
"We'll be fine," Raphael assured her. "Yunobo's not going to miss."
"Okay…" Yunobo took a deep breath, bouncing a little on his heels.
Yunobo carefully rotated the platform that the cannon sat on and then adjusted its height, peering up towards Rudania. Once satisfied, he covered the small earholes on either side of his head and kicked the lever to release the cannon. The cannon's barrel flashed with white light.
The Remote Bomb exploded, sending the cannon ball flying. Yunobo stared at the cannon. "I thought the blast would be louder."
The cannon ball just missed Rudania's foot. That did accomplish one thing, though. It caught the Beast's attention.
Rudania began approaching, as did a number of what looked like upside-down Guardians flying through the air, with spinning blades in place of their legs. "They fly now?" Bernadetta asked.
"Great. Just what we needed," Caspar said sarcastically.
Raphael picked up a large rock and threw it at one of the flying Guardians. With his strength enhanced by his gauntlets, it hit one of the three places where the spinning blades holding the Guardian in the air was attached to the Guardian, and it fell out of the air and crashed into the lava. "Hit it again!"
Link and Yunobo fired the cannon a second time, hitting Rudania's side. Meanwhile, Bernadetta and Marianne had joined Raphael in holding off the flying Guardians, Bernie using her bowcaster and Marianne using her magic.
The cannon fired once more, sending another ball of solid iron into the flank of the Divine Beast. This time, it started to slowly turn to face them, and Link saw with some horror that its segmented head was starting to open like a flower in bloom. He… he knew what that was. He knew exactly what that was. And what it meant for them. "We have to disable Rudania with the next shot, or we're dead."
Yunobo said something that Link assumed was a Goron expletive, and loaded one last cannonball.
Fortunately, Yunobo's aim was true, and the cannon ball hit one of its head fins. Rudania jolted violently with the force of it, actually rising up onto its back two legs briefly before collapsing back down with an earth-shaking crash. A column of black smoke rose from where the cannonball had struck.
Rudania didn't move, its front legs splayed out to either side. With Rudania disabled, Death Mountain had stopped erupting.
"I...I think we did it," Yunobo said.