Chapter 20
The sandstorm that swept all the way to the outskirts of the city did more than obscure vision.
The fierce wind battered the ground and buildings, swallowing up most sounds as well.
That made it the perfect opportunity to ambush the invaders encroaching on the city. Jagd Spinner advanced toward the outskirts.
「Yapi. This is as far as I go.」
The “Last Order,” handed down by the highest-ranking commander.
As the one who inherited that will, Jagd Spinner, unit number 10,253, had to kill every unknown variable that had trespassed into the city.
No resupply could be expected.
Repairs were impossible.
No support was available.
Therefore, it had to win with maximum efficiency and minimum losses.
Jagd Spinner used the sandstorm as cover and slowly, cautiously approached the Hunters’ camp.
The Hunters stood guard with their keen senses, but in the end, they could not surpass the limits of living creatures—and Jagd Spinner had the backup of an entire city.
Despite their clumsy response, Jagd Spinner meticulously analyzed the camp. Machines did not let their guard down.
It began mapping in real time, using long-range scans to identify every enemy.
Easily deceiving their crude watch, it let itself be carried by the sandstorm; the multi-legged tank melted into the darkness and the storm’s noise.
“Ugh... Damn. I can’t see a thing.”
One person had left the camp and was alone in a secluded spot.
Jagd Spinner immediately examined that individual’s readings.
Though the recent intruders wore light armor, they still wore metal armor. Stranger still, they came equipped with bladed weapons instead of guns or cannons.
Threat Level 1.
However, there was a risk they might call for reinforcements.
Jagd Spinner determined that when facing a large group, picking them off one by one was safer and more reliable.
“Huuuu~~”
The Hunter relieving himself behind the building’s outer wall remained oblivious to Jagd Spinner’s presence.
Just then, its enormous steel body moved with chilling silence──
“Hey! Why are you pissing over there?”
“Huh? Jackson?”
Its crab-shell-like body crouched again. The individual named Jackson approached the Hunter, draped an arm over his shoulder, and acted excessively friendly.
“W-what? Why are you suddenly acting like this?”
Though they were both mercenaries in Black Mamba, they weren’t close enough for such an over-the-top gesture. When the bewildered Hunter tried to say something, Jackson whispered, “Shh!”
“Shut up. Quiet. We need to slip away quietly. Unless you want to die...”
He warned his comrade of the enemy in a voice small enough to be swallowed by the sandstorm.
The comrade seemed to catch on; without looking around, the Hunter casually started walking, but──
「Shu...t...u...p... Qui...et...ly... slip aw...ay... if you... don't... want... to di...e...」
-Applying audio file noise filter. Sentence reconstruction complete. Playback──
The voice drowned out by the sandstorm was filtered and analyzed as a clear audio recording.
「Shut up. Quiet. We need to slip away quietly. Unless you want to die...」
-Crack!
The auxiliary joint moved, and the sound of a whip being swung was swallowed by the sandstorm.
* * * *
It was around the time the twelfth victim appeared that the Hunters realized Jagd Spinner was attacking.
The Hunters had been picked off in a stealthy ambush on the outskirts of the camp, cut down by a silent wire cutter. One of them hadn’t died instantly and let out a death cry.
“Aaaaaaaagh!!”
-KWAaaaaagh!
Even after the wire cutter severed the Hunter’s lower body, the Hunter swung a mana-infused sword. But that fighting spirit meant nothing as a huge shadow fell over them.
“N-no...”
An armored leg weighing over five tons crushed a Hunter from the Black Mamba mercenary unit.
-Crunch!
The Hunters who rushed over after hearing the commotion found their comrade, their insides crushed, and Jagd Spinner, its eyes glowing with an eerie light.
Its joints, caked with sticky chunks of flesh, creaked—perhaps because the parts hadn’t been replaced or maintained in ages.
The sound was so much like the wailing of victims’ souls clinging to scraps of flesh that it sent chills down the Hunters’ spines.
“It’s the Jagd Spinner!!”
The voice was swallowed by the sandstorm before it could reach the Hunter’s comrades. Jagd Spinner’s vicious killing machine had opened fire.
-Boom! KWA-KWA-BOOM!
The 60 mm autocannon unleashed a murderous barrage. The heavily armored Hunters were merely flung away, but the lightly armored ones had their limbs torn off.
It was blatant overkill. Excessive force meant for armored vehicles, not people, ravaged the Hunters.
Even amid the sound of sand grains battering concrete, the shells’ impacts rang out like the chilling squelch of meat being minced, searing themselves into the Hunters’ minds.
“Take cover! Take cover!”
The warning didn’t reach them, but none of them were stupid enough to stand casually in an open field.
They hurriedly took shelter in the buildings, dodging autocannon shells pouring through the sandstorm.
Jagd Spinner’s wide-angle lenses calculated the Hunters’ routes of movement.
It calculated where the most Hunters had taken shelter, how dilapidated the building was, and how many rebars supported the concrete... in other words, what would cause the greatest damage if brought down.
A projectile was loaded into Jagd Spinner’s railgun, and electromagnetic force built up to accelerate it to hypersonic speeds.
-KWAANG!
The projectile fired from the 240 mm railgun broke the Mach 3 barrier in an instant, piercing the building amid a sonic boom.
-Krrrunch!
It struck exactly five pillars. Having precisely destroyed the structural weak points of the building where the Hunters were hiding, it began to collapse with a roar.
“Damn it...!”
Their death cries were buried beneath the collapsing concrete.
Hunters had superhuman physiques, so being buried under a building wouldn’t kill them, but taking a dozen or so out of action in an instant was a major blow.
“S-shit, what kind of monster is that...?!”
They couldn’t leave the building. If they did, they’d become targets for the autocannon immediately.
Jagd Spinner prepared a second volley against the Hunters cowering inside in terror.
Just as the railgun, powering up, was about to bring the building down with a pinpoint strike──
“Die.”
With a sound like a cannon being fired, something came crashing down on Jagd Spinner.
-KWAANG!
With a dizzying crash, one of Jagd Spinner’s joints collapsed.
For the first time since the attack began, Jagd Spinner’s wide-angle lenses searched for its attacker. There, Hwang Geumcheol, clad in brilliant golden armor, was swinging a massive hammer.
-Kiiing!
The crushed joint creaked, and a warning flashed that the spring could not withstand the pressure. Jagd Spinner ignored it.
-KWA-KA-KA-KA-KA-KAK!
Autocannon shells rained down. Hwang Geumcheol raised his shield to block them. The 60 mm projectiles pounded him mercilessly.
-Click?
But Hwang Geumcheol’s shield was sturdy. It hadn’t even cracked after taking that relentless barrage.
“It’s a Legendary-grade shield! You think some shells can pierce it?! Geumsun!”
“I told you not to call me Geumsun!!”
Hwang Yeonha’s weapon was a pair of fists: Unique-grade gauntlets flaring out like a fierce lion’s mane. The gauntlets devoured mana like rocket boosters, generating thrust.
-Thoom!
A fist wreathed in golden mana slammed into Jagd Spinner’s joint. The leg buckled from the impact, pinning it in place for a moment.
At that very moment, a magic circle unfolded in the sky.
“Thank you for holding it in place.”
Combat mage Gil Taeseong sent a bolt of lightning crashing down on Jagd Spinner, whose legs had been pinned by the Hwang siblings.
-KRAAANG!
The lightning struck and coursed over the armor on its back, sending a tremendous electrical current through it. A fatal blow to a machine. Jagd Spinner completed its self-diagnostic within 0.8 seconds and reached a decision.
「Emergency purge of overloaded circuits. Radar system down.」
With the systems it had painstakingly used to search the area now offline, Jagd Spinner had to locate its enemies using only its wide-angle lenses. But that wasn’t ideal when surrounded.
「Limited resources authorized. Activating city RWR equipment. Replacing visual targeting.」
It activated electronic equipment that had been steadily accumulated in the city over a long period, despite the collapse of its infrastructure.
Observation devices hidden throughout the city came online, becoming Jagd Spinner’s eyes.
「Threat Level 3. Priority exclusion target identified.」
“Whoa, look at this guy!”
“It’s running! After it!”
Staggering from the siblings’ attacks, Jagd Spinner climbed over nearby buildings to evade their pursuit.
The multi-legged tank, built for urban warfare, moved between buildings as it trained its 60 mm autocannon on a specific target.
Mage Gil Taeseong. A barrage of autocannon shells rained down on him as Black Mamba’s mercenary Hunters guarded him closely.
“Hmph.”
Gil Taeseong shattered a bead-shaped magical artifact as the autocannon fire bore down on him. Transparent, barrier-like fields spread out.
-KWA-KWA-KWA-BOOM!
The autocannon shells rained down, their trajectories impossibly distorted, and struck somewhere far off target.
“W-what...?”
As the Black Mamba mercenaries guarding him stared at the force field in wonder, Gil Taeseong puffed up with pride.
“This is a magical artifact inscribed with a distortion barrier spell developed to counter the Jagd Spinner. No conventional firearms can pierce it.”
The power of firearms came from their rate of fire and accuracy. No matter how many dozens or hundreds of rounds they fired, if the impact points were distorted, the shots would be useless.
It was an expensive one-use artifact, but they were fighting the Jagd Spinner, a Red-difficulty target. They needed this much preparation──
「Anomalous physical phenomenon observed in threat factor. Commencing maintenance calculations.」
But its opponent was a killing machine with a strong AI. Having already faced three raid teams, even a phenomenon that defied physical laws was merely another calculation target.
「Analysis complete. Strike points D15, S37, F11.」
-Thung! Thung! Thung!
Even as it moved between buildings to evade the Hunters’ pursuit, it fired its autocannon in single shots that struck the distortion barrier.
The shells struck completely unexpected points, unlike the eerily accurate impact locations before. But the distorted shells curved with a whoosh, then slammed into the temples of the Black Mamba mercenary Hunters.
“Ghk?!”
“What the hell!”
The bullets’ trajectories were utterly unexpected. Bent by the distortion barrier, they performed impossible acrobatics before hitting the Hunters.
“N-no way!”
It analyzed the barrier in that short time? Was that even possible?
“M-Mage Gil Taeseong! Please turn off the distortion barrier! We can’t defend ourselves!”
The bombardment continued. This wasn’t the previous exchange of firepower, but sniping with precision shots. And the calculations were performed by the city’s maintenance supercomputer, whose capacity no human could hope to match.
They’d have been far better off with a purely physical barrier.
“Damn it! What are you all doing?! Take that thing down!”
At Gil Taeseong’s urgent shout, the Hwang siblings and the Golden Lion Guild immediately moved to eliminate Jagd Spinner. But then Hwang Geumcheol spotted something and shouted urgently.
“Stop!”
“......?”
Hwang Yeonha and the Golden Lion Hunters halted at Hwang Geumcheol’s urgent command. Then they realized why he had said that.
‘Wires?’
‘It wasn’t just running away.’
‘When did it set up so many?’
Wires.
Even as Jagd Spinner moved between buildings to evade the Hwang siblings’ pursuit, it had embedded wires in every direction.
As if the entire area around them had been surrounded by a gigantic spiderweb.
A perfect web of entrapment. In only a few seconds, it had restricted the Hunters’ movements. Jagd Spinner’s railgun turned toward Gil Taeseong.
“N-no...!”
As the railgun began accelerating its projectile to hypersonic speeds... a strange object appeared on Jagd Spinner’s rear camera.
-Clip-clop, clip-clop!
“Huh?”
Everyone’s expressions twisted.
Four long, snow-white legs.
Following the soft-looking white fur, its gentle mane swayed like cotton candy.
But the muscles packed into its entire body gave it an intensity that made it impossible to think of the creature as adorable. Its identity was──
“A...”
“A...”
“......Horse?”
““A horse?””
As everyone watched in astonishment, the divine beast Light Stallion appeared, boasting a sturdy build and the gleam of its splendidly ornamented armor.
“It has been a long time, my old comrade.”
Leon firmly embraced the neck of the fierce, radiant Stallion, and the noble divine beast willingly let its comrade mount its back.
Stroking its gleaming mane, Leon leveled his holy spear at Jagd Spinner and cried out.
“Hear me, warrior!”
Though it was a ridiculous sight on a modern battlefield, the powerful divine aura radiating from the spear and divine steed silenced the onlookers.
They could not deny it with reason; they understood by instinct. That was a being of a different order.
“Your valor, charging alone against numerous foes! The Lionheart King commends you!”
First, he praised the outstanding warrior.
“I grant you the honor of beholding my countenance and the privilege of dueling the Lionheart King. I permit you to face me, warrior!”
He granted it the right to request a duel.
To the Lionheart King, this was a generous and merciful act. Watching it, Hwang Yeonha unconsciously let her honest thoughts slip out.
“......Is this guy nuts?”
At this moment, no one could deny that they were all thinking the same thing.