Let There Be Massacre (2)
Let there be massacre. (2)
A thunderous explosion erupted high in the sky. Before the sound could even reach the ground, Beatrice arrived first.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!! CRAAAAAASH!!!
Beatrice pierced straight through the center of one Magic Colossus, tore through its body, and landed on the ground. The instant she closed in on the colossus, she spun violently, her right-hand adamantium chainsaw ripping open the surface of its alloy armor. The moment she entered its interior, she spun again, carving through it with the five-hundred-mentol Mana Sword blazing in her left hand.
After shredding the colossus’s insides with two full rotations, Beatrice spun once more, slicing through the alloy plating on its back with her chainsaw before finally touching down. The two strikes that tore the alloy surface and the single strike that pulverized the interior had all landed in succession, yet to the Humian soldiers it registered as only one deafening roar. The sequence of slashes had been executed in the blink of an eye.
Most of the Humian troops had lost sight of Beatrice the moment she began her descent from the sky. The instant her mana channels ignited and she broke the sound barrier, she vanished from their eyes, only to reappear on the ground in the same moment the Magic Colossus exploded, unleashing a massive shockwave.
RRRRRRRRUMBLE!!
The atmospheric detonation caused by Beatrice breaking the sound barrier during her fall finally reached them, its thunderous vibration arriving only after she had already landed.
In the midst of this urgent, terrifying situation, the Humians had no time to think deeply or analyze anything. Even so, every soldier present could clearly grasp the result, if not the process: the Magic Colossus that had been utterly destroyed and now lay collapsed on the ground had met its end at Beatrice’s hands.
Having landed in the middle of the Magic Colossus formation, Beatrice was no longer under attack. The soldiers’ mana stones had already been depleted by the earlier concentrated barrage, and they had never been given the chance to reload. Even those few who still had a trace of mana left had wasted it in panicked, wild firing the moment Beatrice charged into their midst.
CLANG!! CLANG!!
Beatrice, moving at an absurd speed that shattered the sound barrier, reduced another Magic Colossus to scrap in an instant. Her terrifying lethality had already halved the nearly one-thousand-strong Humian force while the rear colossi were still advancing.
The commander could no longer bring himself to issue orders. Any command he gave would be nothing more than meaningless flailing against the unidentified maid who had become synonymous with death. The remaining Magic Colossi were still moving under their pilots’ control, yet aiming at Beatrice was impossible; she was little more than a flash of light.
After destroying one colossus and landing amid the shockwave, Beatrice vanished again. In that same instant, one leg each was severed from two nearby Magic Colossi. The two machines, now off-balance, toppled with a deafening crash, their remaining legs buckling beneath them.
SCREEEEEEEECH!!! THUD!! SCREEEEEEEECH!!! THUD!!
The fallen colossi were destroyed without even managing a counterattack. Beatrice simply sliced through their alloy plating with her adamantium chainsaw and stirred their interiors with the five-hundred-mentol Mana Sword. That was all it took.
To Humian common sense, the very act of cutting through a Magic Colossus’s alloy armor was an impossibility. The alloy had been developed jointly with the dragon Kerdihak, and its performance was guaranteed by him. It was a masterpiece of the century that Kerdihak himself had proudly presented, claiming it could withstand even his own lightning. The alloy could endure dozens of direct lightning strikes before it began to melt and could withstand eight consecutive 8th-Tier destructive spells cast by a dragon.
Yet Beatrice’s chainsaw had sliced through that very alloy—the same alloy that could withstand a dragon’s full-power attack—in a single stroke. The commander had lost all will to resist.
“Get ahold of yourself, Commander!!”
“……”
“Damn it!! This is no time to space out!!!”
THUD!
The lead pilot desperately shook the commander, but the man remained lost in a daze. Left with no choice, the pilot committed the grave offense of striking his superior to bring him back to his senses. The pilot’s fist slammed into the commander’s temple. The commander collapsed backward, and only then did a flicker of awareness return to his eyes.
“Even the Magic Colossi won’t last much longer! Switch them all to auto mode and retreat! At least they’ll buy us some time!!”
“That kind of time-buying…”
“It’s not ‘that kind’! If we can reach the Rhinos waiting in the rear, we can accelerate and escape the battlefield! We can shoot while retreating from the moving Rhinos! If we scatter in every direction while holding them off with gunfire and artillery, some of us will die, but the rest who aren’t pursued will survive!!”
The lead pilot, desperate to survive, had already devised a plan. The Rhino was the name of the heavy armored transport vehicle used by Humian soldiers. Its massive frame could carry large numbers of troops, and while slower than a purpose-built Scavenger, it was incomparably faster than fleeing on foot.
“…How many Magic Colossi are left?”
“Sixteen in total—”
BOOOOOOM!! BOOOOOOOM!!!
“Fourteen now……”
Two more colossi exploded and were reduced to wreckage even as they spoke. The fuel tanks inside had ignited upon destruction. If they wasted any more time, both the Magic Colossi and the Humian soldiers would be annihilated faster than it took to drink a cup of tea.
The commander forced himself to his feet, clinging to what little hope remained.
“Effective immediately, all Magic Colossi will switch to auto mode! Their only order is to engage the enemy! The rest of you—run with everything you have toward the Rhinos waiting in the rear while the colossi buy time!! If you want to live, run!!!”
The commander’s resolute order finally jolted the soldiers out of their stupor. Few of them could fully comprehend the command; most only grasped a few words or short phrases. In this hopeless situation, however, that was enough.
BOOOOOOOM!!!
“H-Hii… Hiiiiii!!!”
“Hraaaaaaaaagh!!!!”
Even in the brief moment the soldiers stood frozen, another Magic Colossus was mercilessly destroyed. After several demolitions, Beatrice had located the fuel tanks inside the colossi. She no longer needed to carve open the armor and destroy the interior; she simply plunged her chainsaw through the alloy plating directly into the fuel tanks. The spinning blade produced sparks that inevitably ignited the fuel, triggering an explosion from within.
She no longer needed two strikes. A single thrust of the chainsaw was enough to detonate the interior and obliterate the fragile, unprotected mechanisms with the very explosion she had triggered.
The Humian army’s ultimate weapon was being destroyed with terrifying simplicity. Beatrice’s one-sided rampage had more than doubled in speed, and the Humian soldiers had run out of time.
Magic Colossi engulfed in flames and explosions ground to a halt. The death cries of the so-called “walking steel fortresses” were shocking enough to clear the soldiers’ dazed minds. Even without fully understanding the commander’s orders, they began to carry them out. Rear. Rhino. Run. That much was enough to set their legs moving in desperate flight. Even those who had not understood simply followed their comrades who were already running, so there was no major confusion.
BOOOOOOOM!!! BOOOOOOOM!!!!
Even now, Magic Colossi were collapsing, belching fire from within. Everyone instinctively understood that the moment the last colossus fell, the true hunt of the Humians would begin. The cruel conquerors who had spent a thousand years hunting others were finally experiencing the reversal of their positions.
From now on, it was the Humians’ turn to be hunted.