Chapter 95
The heavy silence felt unusually long.
The remains of the burned drones fell limply through the air like fireflies stripped of their wings.
The Ryan Eliens Company’s mobile special operations agents seemed utterly bewildered by the appearance of the madman who introduced himself as a “cat.”
[…A cat passing by?]
[Searching for a corporate mercenary with that alias─, no results found in the database.]
[He appears highly likely to be a chrome junkie who has lost his sanity. Exercise caution.]
Their conjecture was quite reasonable.
How could a person’s name be Cat?
But if the world operated on nothing but reason, there would have been no reason for me to fall into a game and suffer like this.
I leisurely looked at the cat.
The cat’s movements, after replacing its entire body with the megacorp’s latest cybernetic prosthetics gifted by the mafia boss, were on a level incomparable to when I first met it.
The timing of its entrance was pretty good, too.
‘This guy’s pretty cool.’
I had even found myself thinking that.
Is this why people keep cats?
“……”
No, probably not.
Anyway.
The strange standoff between the two sides continued for quite some time.
Much like gunslingers in the Old West having a duel in a desolate wasteland over a few coins.
Only the sound of the quiet wind rang coldly through the air.
Then I noticed a sign hanging precariously and unstably across the way.
‘…When did it cut that down?’
It must have paid close attention to what happened afterward when it fell while slicing through the drones.
Roughly three seconds, two seconds, one─.
Crack.
The connector holding the dangling sign broke cleanly, and the neon lights went dark.
At the moment the megacorp agents’ gazes were drawn overhead by the strange noise.
I kicked off the ground and charged.
Sometimes, in a battle, the tide can easily turn because of a judgment error lasting no more than a millisecond.
When facing numerous enemies, it was actually more advantageous to plunge into their midst.
Because they couldn’t recklessly keep attacking while worrying about hitting their comrades nearby.
Having naturally taken up position among the mobile special operations agents, I calmly decided to deal with the ones closest to me one by one.
RATATATAT!!
Oh shit, that startled me.
I immediately lowered my stance at the warning from my sixth sense.
Since it happened to be a good angle for striking upward from below, I reflexively gave the mobile special operations agent who had tried to fire his submachine gun without hesitation an uppercut to the chin.
Crack.
Along with the agent’s neck stretching several centimeters, fragments of broken teeth scattered in every direction.
‘Whoa, it fired right away?’
At that moment, the mobile special operations agent behind me clamped down hard on my neck.
The smell of electrolyte fluid flowing in place of blood hit my nose strongly.
Apparently, it had been struck by the submachine-gun bullets fired by another agent moments ago.
‘Ah, right. They’re all androids.’
Rear naked choke.
An invincible technique that, if applied perfectly, knocks you unconscious instantly before you have a chance to defend yourself.
I had used it on Bansho Takemaru before, but this was my first time experiencing it myself.
But my body, already nearing superhuman, could still move unconcernedly for a few seconds even with my carotid arteries blocked from carrying blood to my brain.
“……!!”
I can’t even swallow properly.
Without panicking, I tensed my abdomen and bent my upper body forward.
I rolled my body quickly, almost as if tumbling, and stood up, and the impact opened a gap in the tight choke.
I slipped my hand into the gap that had formed and broke the choke.
─Whoom!!
At the same time, a sinister sound skimmed past at the height where my head had been.
A blade vibrating at tremendous speed cut an unfortunate comrade’s body in half.
Fortunately, I did not suffer the misfortune of having machine-made guts splattered all over my body.
‘I think I’m starting to get the feel of how they fight.’
I stepped backward, evading the ultrasonically vibrating blade that had somehow already come right up to my face.
The sight of a wing-shaped frame protruding from behind its shoulder blades was striking.
At the tips of the protruding wings, two blades were trembling violently, emitting a menacing sound.
Perhaps because they really were megacorp employees, the types of implants they used were quite diverse.
They kept using their original two hands while creating a third and fourth hand to pressure enemies separately.
It looked like a choice and judgment utterly obsessed with efficiency.
Soon, the vibrating blades charged rapidly again.
Thump─.
Even in the slowed world, the blades swaying this way and that were more than a little threatening.
Would my hand get cut off if I knocked one aside?
I knew from my previous fight with Bansho Takemaru that even fingers torn off would regenerate safely, but it still wasn’t an experience I wanted to go through twice.
So I decided to move fast enough that the blades would not touch my body at all.
As I formed that intention, the magic circuits embedded throughout my body heated up.
─Thump, thump-thump.
While everyone else moved as slowly as if underwater, the omnipotent feeling of being the only one who could move normally spread through my bloodstream to every extremity.
My body was light enough that I could barely feel its weight.
I had taken only one step, yet before I knew it, the mobile special operations agent’s head was beneath my foot.
Immediately, I kicked that visible chin with a solid smack.
The opponent’s head was completely blown off─.
“Gasp.”
I briefly stuck out my tongue at the sight, but then.
Come to think of it, it hadn’t had a head to begin with.
I landed behind it with a small sigh.
There were still quite a few enemies left.
[…A high-level magic user?!]
[A member of the family violating the pact?!]
I kept moving without stopping.
If I had been the only one here, the situation would have been truly fucking awful.
The cat was slicing the mobile special operations agents into pieces with its Inferno Katana,
while Mikhail, who had gotten out of the truck at some point, was literally tearing them apart.
Why did I suddenly remember something said by a contestant on some famous variety show?
- A bear tears people apart!!
Sure enough, whether polar bears or brown bears, they all tore people apart lengthwise and crosswise.
In any case, we had shaken off quite a few of the agents pursuing us with machine-gun fire on the way here.
The fight soon reached a lull.
“Whew….”
I let out a deep sigh as I looked at the armored truck lying on its side.
‘…My precious truck.’
It was something Bogus had asked me to be sure to use carefully. (No, he hadn’t.)
I couldn’t help imagining Bogus, who by now was probably somewhere far away in the sky or underground, laughing heartily with his bright teeth bared…….
“Hmm.”
Actually, I couldn’t really picture it.
Unfortunately, I had only ever seen him get angry in real life.
Enough of the pointless jokes.
Unlike me, who was standing still, the cat and Mikhail were thoroughly confirming the deaths of the mobile special operations agents lying on the ground.
I watched them with slight discomfort, then jumped in surprise and pulled my foot back when a blade flashed at my feet without any warning.
“…You again?”
One of the agents whose chin I had struck earlier had attacked me until the very end while lying on the ground.
It sure was persistent.
But perhaps because it was its final act after expending all its energy, the mobile special operations agent recited words in a broken voice like a malfunctioning machine.
[Target. Paul Lucas. Recovery failed…. If forces had been concentrated in one location, it is estimated that the result would have been different….]
“Huh?”
I immediately grabbed the agent by the collar.
“What do you mean, the result would have been different if you’d concentrated your forces in one place?”
[…….]
But there was no answer.
Black electrolyte fluid, thicker than blood, dripped onto the ground.
An inexplicable sense of foreboding brushed the back of my neck.
I casually flung the mobile special operations agent to the ground and pulled a terminal out of my pocket.
Let’s see.
First, let’s try contacting Michael.
📶 Nova
“…?”
Strange.
I had definitely pressed Michael’s name, so why was Nova’s contact information showing up?
No, to begin with, Nova didn’t even have a terminal.
Since the situation was urgent, I grabbed the terminal, which had once again begun heating up like a hand warmer, and pressed the call button.
Brrring.
The dry connection tone continued briefly,
and then a familiar woman’s voice came through the terminal.
[Hello, World. Yes, nice to meet you. I’m the user’s Nova.]
“Uh, yeah. It’s me.”
Her greeting seemed to have changed slightly, but I quickly asked what I needed to know first.
“Did something happen at the grocery store?”
My heart pounded violently.
If something had happened at the grocery store, the responsibility would have been entirely mine.
Fortunately, Nova’s voice was calm.
[No incident of any particular significance to report to the user has occurred.]
Then what on earth had the mobile special operations agent meant?
Was there another target besides Paul Lucas?
Just as I was pondering that,
[Has something happened to you, perhaps?]
“…Hmm.”
It wasn’t like anything had happened.
I mean, being pursued was inevitable anyway.
“Well, nothing special happened to me, either.”
[I actually knew that, too.]
“Then why did you ask abo—”
Wait a second.
What did she mean, she knew?
At the same time as that question arose, a cacophony of loud voices came through the terminal.
[Hot Dog Man!! Are you talking to Hot Dog Man right now?]
[…It’s the same model of terminal.]
[Me too! Me too, let me talk to him! I want a turn!]
They were the voices of the children and Rivera.
They must have been playing with the imps.
I wondered whether Nova had been making the call through an optical HUD─in other words, a smart chip, but a moment later, the person on the other end suddenly changed.
A voice louder than before.
[Hot Dog Man!!]
“Uh, uh….”
My ears hurt a little.
I had been wondering whether Nova might have lied because she was worried about me,
but hearing the children’s cheerful voices, that didn’t seem to be the case.
…Apparently nothing really had happened.
[Are you out? Are you out somewhere?!]
[…I want to go somewhere far away, too.]
[No! Hot Dog Man went out to work!]
I was already feeling dazed.
I paid a moment of respect to every daycare teacher in the world.
Just as my head was beginning to spin more and more,
a chilly child’s voice, as if the temperature had suddenly dropped several degrees, abruptly followed.
[Hot Dog Man.]
“Yes?”
[Don’t you think you’ve been neglecting our boss too much lately? You are her boyfriend, after all.]
What was this now….
Come to think of it, had there been that misunderstanding, too?
[If Hot Dog Man keeps trampling on our boss’s devotion like this, then we’ll─.]
[What kind of nonsense are you talking about!!]
Rivera’s loud voice, rarely heard, rang out.
[No, I was just honestly telling him what the boss couldn’t say….]
[This won’t do. Tell Runrun to gather all the kids today.]
[Th-That’s!!]
The terminal disconnected amid the extremely boisterous atmosphere.
Haha. What a mess. What a mess.
Then the cat and Mikhail approached me.
The cat, whose full-face helmet bore a [ ㅡ v ㅡ ] emoticon, cautiously opened its mouth.
“What is the matter?”
Its tone was blunt, but judging by that expression, it seemed extremely excited.
“No, it’s nothing…. Nothing at all.”
Still, it really was a relief that nothing had happened at the grocery store.
* * *
A few minutes before that call connected─.
Android B-79, a mobile special operations agent of the Ryan Eliens Company manufactured at a B-level production facility, crawled desperately across the gray snowfield, driven by a strange ‘emotion’ it was experiencing for the first time in its life.
Something.
Something had gone wrong.
‘All emotion modules should have been removed, so what on earth is this? Unknown. Why can’t I communicate with headquarters? And why has contact with the other agents on the secure channel also been blocked?’
Behind the suffering android.
Crunch.
The sound of snow being stepped on and compacted reached it.
The android reflexively turned its head back, but there was already nothing there.
Except for a single footprint remaining in the distance.
‘Yes, this is it. This situation…….’
The android could predict what would happen next.
Now, right behind me─.
“You’re the last one.”
It would hear the quiet voice of a girl.
One whose presence it could not sense at all.
Which made them all the more frightening.
Ordinary children.
The dozens of mobile special operations agents had all vanished without a sound or trace.
Suspiciously skilled homeless men, a white-haired woman who could fold a person in half with her bare hands.
And.
‘Things’ whose shadows it could not even see.
‘…I have to inform headquarters of this place’s danger.’
It was impossible because communications had been blocked.
‘At this rate, the danger posed by this building, the Area 49 grocery store, will be buried along with everything else…….’
Eventually, the android realized that every external signal connected to it had been cut off.
The soft sensation of a pile of snow against its head.
That was the end.
The little girl looked down at the headless android and murmured quietly.
“No one….”
can invade the grocery store.
Because that was what Hot Dog Man wanted.
* * *
“Achoo!!”
Huh, that’s strange.
My nose suddenly tickled, and I sneezed.
I didn’t feel like I was coming down with a cold, though.
“Do you have a cold?”
“No, it’s not that….”
“Oh, I suddenly sneezed last time, too.”
Androids sneeze, too, huh.
Should I call this well-made, or say they went too far and added uselessly strange functions…?
I nodded, letting Paul Lucas’s words wash over me.
“Well, the air in the outskirts of the city is generally not very good. It seems especially bad here.”
“Have you been here before?”
“No.”
And it was a place I never wanted to visit again.
I looked at the vast garbage dump spread out right before me and muttered inwardly.
A place that could be called Area 49’s brother district─.
Area 50, the garbage landfill.
A direct route to the wastelands.