But I could see a smile of satisfaction on her face as she watched the Over Gears effortlessly pulverize their foes. Her Gollem, Fenrir, didn’t quite seem so enthused. He simply looked up at his master with an expression that seemed to signify exasperation.
Magic barrier, huh...? Kind of like how I put a shield up around myself when I go flying, I guess.
Tiger Rouge’s fangs sank into a Steel Soldier, crushing it to bits. Meanwhile, Leo Noir’s claws tore a nearby Wood Golem to ribbons.
Neither the Wood Golems nor the Steel Soldiers could compete with the Over Gears in terms of speed. It was clear as day just who was predator and who was prey over there.
“They’re real idiots. They’re completely wasting the utility of soldat technology. But what do you expect? They’re all unmanned drones.”
“Hm?”
I was curious about what Elluka meant, but doctor Babylon stepped in to explain.
“There isn’t a human commander out there with them, so they’re a mob of useless mooks. Soldats typically work in units of five. Those fives can then group up with other fives for maximum results, but they can’t do that here because each one is unmanned. All they can do is listen to the commands they were given, and not evolve beyond that. Soldats are supposed to be able to co-ordinate to gang up on their enemies in groups of up to a hundred, so this seems like a needless waste to me.”
If there were three human commanders called A, B, and C... Then the three would control five soldats each, creating a unified team that could work well together.
But in this case, A, B, and C just gave out a basic order to kill the enemy, and then sat back and waited for things to happen. Without any active commands on the fields, they couldn’t efficiently co-ordinate at all.
“There’s no way in hell victory would shine upon cowards and losers like them.”
The doctor grinned a bit before taking out a small cigarette. She puffed on it a few times and continued watching the carnage. Aren’t you a little girl? Is that okay?
“Hm? What’s with that face? Oh, this isn’t tobacco. It’s an Ether Cigarette, I had Flora make it. It’s nice, calming, and not really addictive. Wanna try?”
Even if there’s no nicotine in that thing, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s probably something equally as nefarious. I won’t be puffing the devil’s pipe today, thank you very much.
“Oh, right... That person over there, cutting the Steel Soldiers one after the other. Isn’t that your sister?”
“What?!”
I looked at the little display that Doc Babylon pointed to... and saw Moroha swinging a big crystal blade around. Karina was there too, swinging a crystal ax.
...Well, that cements it. Our win is a hundred percent guaranteed.
I was convinced we had no chance of losing now.
“Hm... I expected to see one more eager fighter out there, though.”
“Right here!”
“What?!”
Uncle Takeru appeared behind me with a broad grin and folded arms.
Ack, that scared me! When’d you start appearing out of nowhere like Karen does? His honed body, worn-out uniform, and red hairband stood tall. Thus, the god of combat descended.
Karen wasn’t here, and I had a feeling she was napping elsewhere. This battle had nothing to do with romance, after all.
I wondered how Takeru found out about this, but I was even more concerned about the dead-eyed guy standing next to him.
“What brings you here, Ende?”
“Don’t bother asking, Touya... I’m not allowed to refuse...”
Ende stared at the ground with resignation in his eyes. The situation was pretty clear. Takeru somehow found out about this and dragged the poor guy over to fight.
“Well, what brings you guys here?”
“Hoho. Ain’t it obvious? We don’t need to fight these machines, we should mete justice out to the ones who sent them. You were thinking of going, right?”
Uncle Takeru let out a big laugh. Ah, now I see.
He was right, I was planning to leave the Steel Soldiers and Wood Golems to everyone else while I went to crush the guys behind Qulau on my own. I’d already figured out their base thanks to the memories I’d stolen, and I also sensed the presence of people watching the battle from afar. They were probably extremely worried due to how hard their side was getting bodied, though.
There weren’t many, though... so it was obvious all of the Qulau members weren’t right there. It was likely that they were either back at their base, or out on a separate mission.
Either way, they were done for.
“Don’t kill them, alright?”
“Perish the thought, my boy! Today’s lesson is all about non-lethal takedowns! Ain’t that right, Ende?”
“Wh-What?! Me?! What about you?!”
“I’ll watch from afar, of course! And I’ll decide on what to do with you next based on how well you perform!”
Ende stared ahead. I looked into his soulless, hollow eyes. I turned to Takeru, partly out of concern.
“If he fails, what’ll you do?”
“Hm... Something basic, I guess? Oh, how about a one-hundred-and-sixty hour running marathon?”
Ende started to shiver violently. What?! That’s a full week! Ende can’t run non-stop for a week!
Ende seemed to be having a pretty bad time, so I threw out an olive branch to the poor bastard.
“W-Well, how about giving him a rest day as a reward if he does well? All fighters need their rest, don’t you think?”
“Hmm... You raise a fair point there. Alright! That sounds good!”
Ende quietly walked over to me, tears streaming down his face as he pulled me in for a hug. Hey, hey, knock it off... I don’t like that kinda stuff.
Now all we had to do was take care of the enemy. I left Elluka, Fenrir, and Doc Babylon behind as I headed out.
There was a group of roughly three-hundred hiding nearby. We’d deal with them first. Uncle Takeru said to leave them all to Ende, and I said that seemed fair enough. Anything that meant I had to deal with less crap was fine in my book.
We all used [Teleport] to reach the area, surprising the horse-mounted masked men.
“Wha... Who?! Bastards!”
“[Prison].”
I shrugged slightly and cast a barrier around us. Didn’t want anyone getting out, after all.
It was cast over a broad area so it was weaker than my usual ones, but it was still about as dense as steel armor.
“Rest’s up to you. Go get ‘em, tiger.”
“Tch... You can’t even help a little bit?”
Ende grumbled a bit. Now, now... It’s your training session, not mine.
“Three minutes, Ende. You have three minutes to take them all down. If you go even one second over that, then you’ll fail the lesson!”
“What?! Master, that’s wild!”
Uncle Takeru simply shook his head and folded his arms. He was no god at all. This man was a true demon.
Man, that’s an average of ten people every six seconds. Good luck.
“Ghuh!”
“Gwuh?!”
As I started running numbers mentally, Ende leaped right into action.
“Wh-What’s with him?!”
“It’s just one man, stop him!”
“Sorry, guys! But you gotta stop running. This is a timed mission!”
He leaped from horse to horse, effortlessly smashing the masks each man wore. I could sense his desperation. Honestly, I understood it, given that he had a potential day of rest on the line. If he lost, it’d be a living hell.
Ende continued to leap from horse to horse, never once touching the ground. Who the hell are you, Minamoto no Yoshitsune?
They thrusted spears up at him as he leaped, but he just balanced on top of them to gain even more mobility.
“Damn... That’s pretty cool.”
Ende kept spinning around and around, blasting away each enemy he approached. His long scarf
trailed behind him, almost acting as an echo of his motions.
I’d only set the barrier to prevent humans from escaping, so the horses scattered and eventually left the area.
Some dumbasses tried to escape, but they promptly ran into the walls of the barrier and fell from their horses.
Before long there were only half the men left. He was keeping a surprising pace.
“One minute left!”
Uncle Takeru yelled out all of a sudden. Oh damn, already? Guess it’s harder to fight while holding back than you’d expect.
“He still hasn’t perfected the art of holding himself back against human enemies. But I’m not surprised. He might be untrained, but he’s still a formidable fighter. He’s certainly a genius in the classical sense.”
“A genius, huh...? I dunno... Maybe you should make him run for a week straight even if he passes.”
“Hey, I heard that!”
The alleged genius known as Ende yelled out to us with fear in his voice. Hey, don’t waste time listening in, you have enemies to beat!
“Here’s... The last one!”
Ende delivered a fearsome roundhouse kick to the final enemy standing, shattering his mask to bits.
There were corpses all over the place. Actually, none of them were dead. So it was just unconscious men all over the place. I briefly wondered if we even needed to fight if we weren’t going to kill them... But some beating would probably do them a world of good anyway.
“What’s my time?”
“Two minutes, forty-seven seconds.”
Uncle Takeru looked up from the timer app on his smartphone. Luckily for Ende, he seemed to have avoided a grim fate. He brought a hand to his chest and let out a relieved sigh.
“But...”
Ende and I glanced at Takeru, concerned. Huh? But what?
“The man you just kicked. He’s dying, rapidly.”
“Huh?! Wait! Hold on! Don’t die, man! At least not now! Die later instead!”
Ende shook the man’s shoulders. He was bleeding profusely from his face. That dumbass was probably just making things worse, so I promptly cast [Mega Heal] on the wounded guy. I didn’t want to let Ende lose all hope whatsoever, after all. I wasn’t cruel.
“Gwuh...? I...”
“Oh thank goodness! You’re not dead, thank goodness! Now I’ll just bash you a little softer in the face.”
“Gwuh?!”
Ende quickly punched the man in the nose, a bit weaker than his kick form before.
...Wow.
“What’s my time, Master?!”
“Two minutes, fifty-nine seconds. You passed. Good job.”
If the master was so nonchalant about beating people up so savagely, then his student was truly not far behind... I worried about the effect they could have on Elze.
I looked over at the battlefield. It had only been three minutes, so obviously it was far from over. The knights and Over Gears focused on the Steel Soldiers, while Elze and the others focused on the Wood Golems.
I saw Elze’s Frame Gear, Gerhilde, waltzing across the battlefield with similar motions to the ones I’d just seen from Ende. Its left pile bunker smashed a hole through a Wood Golem, knocking it down. She followed that up with an uppercut, piercing the core through with the pile bunker on the right. She was merciless.
“Hah... Smash!”
I wondered if they’d had an influence on her already, or if she’d always been like this.
Either way, it was time to get all these unconscious people back to Horn’s castle. I imagine they’d all be tried and either executed or sent to the mines for life.
I wouldn’t let the ones at the hideout escape, either. I also had an innocent Gollem technician to save.
“I’ll be fighting at the hideout, alright?”
“Fine by us. We’re the ones tagging along, anyway.”
I looked behind uncle Takeru and saw Ende breathing a huge sigh of relief. It was a little pitiful.
“So, where is it?”
“Northward... Right there.”
I pointed to it on the map I’d projected into the air. It was pretty close to the city where I’d taken out the fake emperor of Yulong a while back. There were about three-hundred people there, in a small fortified area.
It was definitely a hard-to-find place, surrounded by hills and boulders. If the memories I’d stolen from that guy were right, there was also an underground production facility there too.
We didn’t have any time to waste, I didn’t want a single guy escaping. We had to go in, and we had to go in hard.
After confirming the location, we all teleported to our destination.
◇ ◇ ◇
The base was surrounded by steep, jagged rocks, much like the ones from the famous Hollow Needle novel. It was a masterwork of engineering. The building fitting snugly inside a fissure in the earth.
I saw a man on a guard tower in the distance. He stared at us as we appeared out of nothing, his eyes wide. Before us was a massive, sturdy door. It was the only thing keeping us from getting inside.
“Kablam!”
The sturdy door was rendered useless by just one of uncle Takeru’s mighty punches.
“Don’t you think we could’ve gone about this a bit sneakier?”
“Fool! A man must always charge ahead! Anything else is a waste of time!”
...You’re a pretty simple guy. But I can’t really say anything, I was about to destroy it too.
“E-Enemies! Enemies at the gate!” The lookout started to bash a hammer against a loud bell. A large group of mask-wearing, black-clothed men poured out of the base in response.
Hm? These guys have gold tints on their masks. Are they the elites of Qulau?
“Well, trash is trash at the end of the day.”
I took out my gunsword and began peppering the men in front of me with paralyzing bullets.
Takeru and Ende leaped into the fray, knocking down man after man.
I could’ve handled them all at once using my smartphone’s target lock, but I didn’t want to run the risk of letting any non-mask-wearing guys escape. Plus, Ende needed more practice.
“Bring out the Steel Soldiers!” I raised an eyebrow as large summoning circles appeared near us. Two gold-tinged Steel Soldiers rose out of them. Yep, this is Gordian’s doing alright.
One of the unnecessarily shiny Steel Soldiers took a step forward... before immediately being smashed into a cliff face and torn to pieces. I was taken aback for a moment. I turned to look at the other Steel Soldier, and witnessed the figure of uncle Takeru rising upward, his fist held high as it uppercut the machine.
I looked upward as the Steel Soldier was catapulted far off into the sky.
Eventually, it landed on the ground, clattering to pieces.
F.
“...Seeing that really is frightening...”
Ende muttered quietly. I could understand why. It was how I felt whenever I fought against Moroha. The very idea of comparing ourselves to full gods was a mistake, though.
“A-A monster!”
“Run! Run away, everyone!”
Those idiots didn’t know that I’d already cast a wide-scale barrier around the area to prevent their escape. A Steel Soldier could probably muster up enough power, though. Still, even if I felt it break, I could instantly repair it.
“Whoopsie.”
I turned my body, narrowly avoiding the dagger that had just been hurled my way. I hadn’t even noticed it until it was about to hit me.
I turned and saw a man wearing the blackest mask I’d seen yet. I’d sensed the smell of death on the other men, but this guy reeked of it the most. He was clearly a man who survived on the suffering of others.
“Are you Qulau’s leader, then?”
“You would be correct... I am the shadow lurking within Yulong’s memory, I am the... Gaugh?!”
“Oh.”
As the leader began to monologue, Ende suddenly came in from the side and punched him. He flew off a s
hort distance with his body bent in a sideways V-shape.
“...Hey.”
“Oh, sorry. Did you want to listen to his whole speech?”
“Nah, I was actually gonna shoot him halfway through.”
“Oh, then it’s all good then.”
I mean, sure it’s good, but... I kinda wanted to beat him!
I grumbled a bit, spitefully shooting the fallen, squirming leader with a paralysis bullet. I restrained him and then pulled off his mask. He just looked like an ordinary guy in his forties.
I figured the whole point of being an assassin was to blend in, though... so it seemed reasonable.
“Sorry, pal. Your plans all come to an end right here. If you really wanted to rebuild Yulong, you should’ve put those daggers down and picked up a farming tool.”
I left the leader behind to wallow in anguish, regret, pain, or whatever it was... and headed deeper into the fortress.
I beat back numerous small-fry enemies before finding the teleport sigil that would take me underground. This hideout was originally built by Gordian, who intended to create a magical imperium and rule over the world. As such, the fort had several magical items littered around it.
I poured my magic into the sigil and teleported underground, leaving Takeru and Ende to mop up the stragglers outside.
The place I ended up in looked like a massive underground cave. There were building materials scattered around here and there. It kind of reminded me of a hangar. I looked around and clearly saw a few items that had their origins in the Reverse World.
There were a few Steel Soldiers here as well, though none were completely assembled. There were no doubts now. This place was where they were making them. Given that there were only incomplete ones down there, it seemed like they’d deployed all their usable ones.
After a few moments, ten men wearing Qulau masks surrounded me.
“Back off, idiots.”
“Guh?!”
“Gyuh!”
I took them all out with my gun. I didn’t care about those guys. Instead, I cared more about the group of ragged-looking men near the Steel Soldiers.
They weren’t wearing masks, but tattered clothes. They clearly weren’t Qulau members. Not only that, but they had submission collars around their necks.
In Another World With My Smartphone: Volume 17 Page 21
