Kreeeeak.
The torn-off shutter swayed in the wind.
Noise raised a hand.
“Left alley is clear. We’re going that way.”
Blackbeak answered by flicking his fingers.
Snap. Snap.
The two wolf-types immediately split off to the left and right.
I swept the ground first.
There was less caught in my divine sense than I’d expected. Dead things, hidden things, things moving in the distance. Most of the infected had already swarmed upward, following louder noises and the thicker scent of blood.
Thanks to that, we picked up speed.
Not that it meant we passed through quietly.
“What the fuck is that?”
Someone cursed from inside an alley.
“Don’t touch it. That’s not it!”
At present, the outskirts of District 30 were no place for ordinary refugees to wander.
Those who had failed to flee to the end were already dead or in hiding. The ones crawling through the ruins were of another breed. Looters rifling through the pockets of the dead, low-grade mercenaries trying to grab a share no matter how the board flipped, fixers and drifters clutching a single gun while watching the situation to the bitter end.
The two wolf-types growled low and opened the way.
Blackbeak passed leisurely between them.
I slid along a little ahead of him, sweeping the ground in a long arc.
“Hey, move. I said move.”
“I know, fuck. Don’t push me.”
The ones hiding pulled back first.
Even so, there were still those who kept calculating until the end.
The moment we were about to pass an alley, another presence caught in my divine sense among the dead.
It was still breathing.
Beneath an overturned carrier, a man who had been lying face down pretending to be dead slowly raised his upper body.
Clack.
The muzzle of a shortened pulse carbine rose. At the same time, two more leaped out from behind a pile of scrap. One had a wrist launcher wrapped around his forearm, and the other held a palm-sized jamming plate that emitted blue lines.
Bang!
A round scraped the steel plate beside my head.
Blackbeak’s words fell short.
“Noise, back off.”
I was already moving.
The line caught in my divine sense led beneath the neck of the man with the gun. A joint not covered by armor. The moment my ocular art seized that line, the distance between us collapsed in an instant.
His face hardened.
“Uh—”
Thuk.
I grazed past the joint beneath his neck. The man with the gun collapsed where he stood.
The remaining two immediately backed away.
“Crazy bastard—”
“Run!”
The wolf-type growled low.
The two vanished into the alley, abandoning even the equipment they had been carrying. There was no need to chase them.
Noise immediately came over.
“Boss, there’s stuff here worth taking.”
“What.”
“One shortened pulse carbine. Two battery packs. The comm plate’s half dead, but it still connects.”
Blackbeak pointed at the forearm equipment with his chin.
“That?”
Noise checked it quickly.
“Wrist launcher. One round left.”
“Take it.”
Noise silently shoved it into his belt.
Similar incidents followed several more times.
A gun muzzle rose from behind a fallen signboard.
Clack.
Before Blackbeak could even flick his fingers, one wolf-type bared its teeth low.
The muzzle slowly lowered.
The man hiding behind it swallowed his curse and disappeared behind the wall.
Living men knew fear.
The infected were different.
Thud.
An infected burst out from a side alley.
I lowered my body.
What my divine sense caught first was a thin seam leading from below the neck into the inside of the chest. Demonic energy thinly coated my scales. My small body was not a disadvantage. If anything, it was convenient for slipping into narrow gaps.
A tentacle scraped the ground.
I slid beneath it.
Thuk.
The tip of my head, imbued with demonic energy, pierced the line. The core crumpled inside the flesh, and the tentacle wavered in midair before drooping limply.
“Right side blocked!”
Noise shouted.
Blackbeak answered at once.
“And the left?”
“Lots of debris!”
“Can we break through?”
“If you open the way from the front, yes!”
The corner of Blackbeak’s mouth twisted.
“You heard him?”
I was already turning my body.
My divine sense first caught the thin seams. My ocular art seized those lines clearly. Demonic energy thinly coated my scales, and my body burrowed into the gaps.
I connected distances and bent directions.
The seam beneath the neck, the gap spread like ribs, the black line curling inward beneath the shell.
My divine sense caught them first, and my ocular art held them. Each time my demonic-energy-coated scales brushed through them, an infected core collapsed.
There was no sensation of squeezing out power like before.
The more I moved, the smoother it became.
— Wait.
AI’s voice cut in.
— That was smoother than just now.
Another infected sprang out from the side.
My body burrowed in first. I raised my scales along the thin seam caught in my divine sense, and my demonic-energy-cloaked body grazed through its center.
Thuk.
The core crumpled, and the tentacles lost their strength.
— Did you see that? You got better again.
AI spoke quickly.
— This doesn’t make sense. Even I’ve never seen efficiency like this. The more you fight, the less power you’re using for the same movements.
It wasn’t wrong.
My divine sense reached farther, and my ocular art dug deeper. The sense of folding distance now came to my body first. The power I had once forced into shape felt natural, as if it had been made to move that way from the beginning.
— This isn’t something to just be happy about. The rate your efficiency is rising is too fast.
That was true too.
And yet my body kept feeling lighter.
“Boss.”
Noise spoke low.
“The barrier wall isn’t far.”
Before he had even finished speaking, the sound changed.
Duuung.
A heavy resonance rolled in from afar.
Soon after, artillery fire overlapped it. Scorching lines of light tearing through the air, the sound of something being ground down, blue flashes bursting atop the barrier wall.
The view opened up.
Noise inhaled.
“……It’s still holding.”
The barrier wall had not collapsed.
I had thought the lower section would already be torn apart and extinguished. The road here was in this state, so there was no way that wall could be intact.
But the upper batteries were still alive.
The batteries lined along the top of the barrier wall poured out light without rest. Lasers, shells, and nameless photon rounds rained beyond the wall. Beneath the smoke-covered sky, every time the batteries spat out low, dull thunder, the entire barrier wall reverberated like a gigantic war machine.
It was a completely different sight from the silence below.
Up there, they were still fighting.
Noise’s movements grew faster.
The two wolf-types lowered their bodies and picked up speed as well. Blackbeak advanced without a word.
There was not absolutely no hope.
Kwaaaang!
That hope did not last long.
An explosion erupted from the lower side of the barrier wall. Then came the sound of tracks scraping the ground, drone wings trembling, and thick metal being crushed head-on, all surging in at once.
“Down.”
Blackbeak said.
We lowered our bodies almost simultaneously.
Through the gap between a collapsed cargo container and an overturned carrier, the battlefield came into view.
Noise checked the broken terminal and the battlefield by turns.
“The direction is right.”
His face hardened.
“The entrance I remember is inside that loading zone.”
A battle was unfolding there.
Three tanks were planted in front like a wedge.
Their exteriors were not clean. There were patched marks all over their armor plates, and beneath the gun barrels were traces of something having been torn off and reattached. Still, their size and weight were unmistakable.
Dozens of drones hovered above and to either side of them.
Some had their outer shells peeled off, and some had one wing rattling violently. Even as they staggered, unable to keep their balance, they continued pouring out red beams.
Noise lowered the broken terminal.
“……Aren’t those from the Barrier Wall Association?”
Blackbeak clicked his tongue briefly.
“Looks like they still had ground forces left.”
“I thought everything below the barrier wall was finished long ago. I didn’t expect forces of that scale to still remain.”
“You think the bastards upstairs would just hand over their lifeline?”
A person cutting across the barrage caught in my divine sense.
At first, I thought he was one of the Barrier Wall Association’s troops. But he wasn’t. His movements were different. He slipped through the hail of bullets and beams, persistently targeting only the arms, knees, and gaps between the armor plates of that ponderous entity.
Metal was embedded all over his body.
Black implants crawled up from the nape of his neck to his shoulders, and both his arms were closer to machinery than flesh. Blue luminous lines set along his spine blinked briefly whenever he moved. In his hand was a long-bladed weapon. Rather than a sword, it looked like a piece of metal ground down from a thin armor plate.
The man did not clash with it head-on.
He rolled, slid, kicked off the side of a broken tank to spring upward, and kept stabbing the same spots. Each attack was small. But every one accumulated in the same gaps in the armor.
“……The Red Pine Society leader.”
Noise spat the words low, looking at the black implant embedded in the man’s nape.
Blackbeak let out a short breath.
“Why is that old son of a bitch here when he should be holed up in his district?”
Only then did I get a proper look at what the Red Pine Society leader was fighting.
Its size struck me first.
The arrangement of its head and torso, arms and legs could be called humanoid. Its proportions, however, were anything but normal. Its shoulders and arms were swollen enough to catch the eye before its torso, and thick armor plates were attached over its masses of flesh as if forced to interlock. Rather than wearing armor, it looked more like chunks of metal had clung to a living body and were moving with it.
What it held in its hand looked like a mace.
More precisely, rather than a weapon, it was closer to a battering ram with a heavy lump of iron forcibly attached to the end of a shaft. Its surface was layered like armor plating, and whenever it moved, a dull sound of metal interlocking came from within.
Thud.
When it took one step, the ground shook.
It was slow.
Instead, it looked as if whatever tried to block it would break first.
Drone fire scraped across its upper body. Sparks flew.
It did not stop.
The lump of iron swung sideways.
Baaang!
The main cannon of the lead tank was crushed flat. The barrel folded sideways, and the front of the vehicle jolted upward before slumping down at an angle.
Several drones caught in the shockwave flipped over in midair.
Noise cursed low.
“Damn it…… It’s Irregular knight-class.”
Blackbeak also stopped moving.
At that moment, the Red Pine Society leader dug in again.
The implants embedded in his body flashed blue. Just before the gigantic entity’s lump of iron returned, he stepped on the wreckage of a tank and sprang upward. His long weapon scraped through the gap between the shoulder armor plates.
Kagagak!
It was shallow.
It was closer to a scratch than a wound.
But the Red Pine Society leader did not retreat. As soon as he landed, he rolled to the side, and the lump of iron that came crashing down after him smashed the spot where he had been.
Kwaang!
The ground caved in.
Noise clenched his teeth.
“At this rate, he won’t last a few minutes.”
Blackbeak laughed low.
“Serves him right.”
The laughter did not last long.
“If that thing falls, the loading zone entrance won’t hold long either.”
“Of all places, they had to raise hell there.”
Blackbeak asked shortly.
“Way around?”
Noise checked the terminal. A few faint lines trembled across the cracked screen.
“There is one. But even if we circle around, we’ll have to brush past the rear of that battlefield. The entrance, if my memory’s right, is inside that loading zone.”
“Another route.”
“There’s one more on the map. I can’t confirm whether it’s blocked or open.”
“You’re telling me to go by gut?”
“With this terminal, I can’t verify it.”
Blackbeak’s fingers stopped.
The barrage from the tanks and drones poured out again.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The massive entity’s body sank into the smoke. But the next instant, that heavy shadow emerged forward just the same. Sparks burst across its armor plates, and molten metal dripped onto the ground.
It was still standing.
Noise spoke low.
“If we go in there, we’re just dying like dogs.”
Blackbeak glanced back and forth between the knight-class entity and the loading zone behind it.
“Hoo.”
A short breath escaped him.
Then another sound came from above the barrier wall.
Thud.
It was different from artillery fire.
It was the sound of something falling over the barrier wall.
And it was not alone.
Thud. Thud thud. Crasssh!
Black shapes came down along the upper structures.
They were different from the infected crawling down. They descended as if falling, landed on two feet, and immediately straightened their backs.
They stood on two legs.
They had arms and legs as well.
Only, their lengths and joints were all wrong.
One had arms abnormally long, its fingertips drooping near the ground. Another had bone-like protrusions rising over its shoulders like a crown. Another had a smooth black plate attached where its face should have been, and blue light blinked from within it.
Noise’s breath caught.
“Irregular…… mutants.”
Blackbeak did not answer.
“Not just one or two of them.”
The Barrier Wall Association forces reacted.
“Left side’s breaking!”
“Turn the drones! Watch our backs, fuck!”
Some of the drones changed direction.
The mutant at the very front lowered its body.
In the next beat, two drones folded in half in midair. Its long arm swung, and a black mark was carved into the side of a tank reinforced with armor plates.
Another mutant drove its hand into a structure beneath the barrier wall and leaped into the battlefield as if hauling its body up.
The front line collapsed in an instant.
The tanks were already strained just holding down the knight-class. When the mutants dug in from the side on top of that, the Barrier Wall Association’s field of fire split in two. Their focus scattered, and the drone formation broke apart.
“The defensive line is being pushed back!”
Noise clenched his teeth.
Blackbeak chewed out a low curse.
“Damn it.”
A sharp sensation caught in my divine sense.
In the middle of the battlefield, one mutant with a black plate over its face turned its head.
Precisely toward us.
I lowered my body.
The two wolf-types growled at the same time.
Noise swallowed a breath.
“Boss.”
Blackbeak said low,
“I saw it.”
The blue light inside the black plate blinked once more.
The next instant, its hand pointed toward us.
AI’s words cut in briefly.
— This is bad.
Blackbeak twisted his lips.
“Move.”
Before the word had even ended, the mutants turned in our direction.