Chapter 516
Chapter 516
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 24
Chapter Title: The Greatest Creditor (6)
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Raptor Nest. This bizarre structure, pieced together from hundreds of wrecked combat vehicles and welded into shape, boasted defenses so monstrous it was an impregnable fortress, thanks to the sheer toughness of its materials.
Vroooom—!
The tank armor from an era of laser weapons and electromagnetic acceleration rounds had been built to withstand every kind of attack. Even now, turrets still clinging to life on the stacked-up walls swiveled irregularly in all directions. And even if a shell barely punched through that thick barrier to damage the inner mechanisms, destroying just a fraction wouldn’t faze the hundreds of engines and tracks propelling the base.
Screeeeech—
Boom!
That’s why, the moment the rhino-like bumper of his customized armed truck—tailored entirely to his tastes—smashed into the Nest’s outer wall, Ian shoved aside the exploding airbag with utter certainty.
“Keuheheh—cough! Ke.... This perverted war machine... Vex couldn’t touch it with his whole damn arsenal....”
No one else on this battlefield could crack it but him.
Grind, clang!
He kicked open the crumpled door with his combat boot, revealing the space inside the Nest’s outer wall: a web of pipes and supports linking every kind of equipment part.
“Keuheheheh.... Seven o’clock position, outer wall base equipment. From back when the Nest was less than half its current size, used as foundation for external expansion—vehicle [Rescue 2/7485]. Broke down during construction because the base vehicle couldn’t handle the load, but since it was already tangled up and welded in place, they had no choice but to patch it with these auxiliary supports.... Cough!”
He still remembered it vividly. Back when the Raptor Society was just getting started. Engineer requests to replace that section came daily, reports of it collapsing again came weekly, and in a Raptor Society full of junkies and war addicts, the only one who gave those requests any thought was Ashfield—the one obsessed with this massive engine of destruction.
“As expected, it’s exactly the same as back then.... Yeah, it had to be. Of course it is.”
Ian had to lean against the wall as the vomiting of blood grew worse. Beneath the fresh clots he spat out, his fingertips crushed through the hard, crusted bloodstains that coated the wall, mingled with oil and dust.
Under those bloodstains blanketing the wall lay dozens of parched corpses, dried brittle by engine heat.
“....Hello, lads. Raptor’s engineering crew.”
The moment Ashfield got the report that this weak point couldn’t be fixed, he summoned all the engineers there. They rushed over without hesitation at their only communicating superior’s order, and per his command, they plated the outside with sheet metal to make it look like the rest of the outer wall, erected auxiliary supports to give that plating some minimal defense,
and by the time the work was done, he’d gunned them all down. Back then, it was just security protocol for the only people who knew the Nest’s sole vulnerability. After that day, Ian was the only one who knew about the gaping hole in that outer wall—no wonder no follow-up measures were ever taken.
“Sorry about that.”
In the end, they’d died for nothing. Their deaths came with the label of protecting the Nest, but the very man tasked with that duty had wormed his way in through the exact spot he’d hidden.
“Back then, I didn’t know shit. That blood of mine was ice-cold.”
Clank!
Pshht!
His oversized gun case—practically his signature—was too heavy for the roughly bandaged wound to handle.
Ian shook the blood flowing from his wound over the mummified corpses, like pouring liquor on a grave.
“You can see it’s cooling off bit by bit.”
Keuh, keuheheheh—
How utterly unfunny. If the old Ashfield had been the cold-blooded ‘Cold Blood,’ then Metal Joe right now was literally freezing, lips turning blue. Drugs were puppeteering a body that should’ve collapsed ages ago, and thanks to that, his failing flesh felt the cool blood-vomit like a breeze.
Most of his memories here were of killing. Days immersed in war, wielding explosions with the obsession of a man addicted only to blasts. Memories of slaughtering countless enemies. Memories of murdering even more civilians. And the memory of his wife and daughter’s murder.
Now, to layer his own death atop all those dormant memories of death.
“Fate. Fate, huh....”
Beyond the steel wall, the crisp footsteps of booted soldiers approached rapidly. The clack of loading ammo. Taps probing positions. The hiss of an acetylene welder’s flame slicing straight toward him.
“Damn, took you long enough to show up.”
His innate battlefield senses scanned the front.
‘Enemies. Heavy footfalls mean cyborgs, heavy-armored ones at that. High chance they’re in Lv4+ hazmat suits to counter his explosive preference. Initial 30-man standby squad arrived five minutes post-infiltration, reinforcements incoming.’
‘Allies. Solo. Explosives-heavy heavy weapons loadout. Compound fractures. Chest cavity wide open. Combat incapable. Middle-aged walking corpse.’
“Keuheheheh, this is some bullshit unfair matchup.”
Zzzzzzzzt—
The welder carved a square into the wall.
Ping—
Ian layered the grenade pin-pull on top of those sounds.
The red-hot-edged plate crashed down. Two soldiers in thick explosive-proof suits and fire shields sealed the entrance airtight, a flamethrower’s nozzle peeking between them.
By contrast, his pathetically light grenade arced weakly, rolling to a stop halfway to the enemy.
As Ian ducked frantically and the Raptor soldiers raised their shields mocking his futile resistance, that single small antipersonnel grenade detonated.
Boom—
—KABOOOM! Kwang! Boom! Kwoooom!
That tiny blast kicked off a chain like missiles erupting from underground, explosions ripping along the Nest’s wall.
Kwaaaang!
The blasts shredded soldiers and plating, surging inward.
Grind, screeeeech—!
The cracks they wrought tore through outer walls and innards that had supported each other under layered weight.
—Kuuuung. Kuuuuuung!
Finally, the Nest’s left face began collapsing from the base up, dragging connected tanks with it.
Cough, cough!
“....Heating pipes. Those stingy Raptor bastards recycled tank engine heat and exhaust into heating the whole Nest.”
That limp grenade hadn’t targeted the soldiers—it had hit the heating pipes exposed in the empty space inside the outer wall, spanning the entire Nest.
The Raptors ran over a thousand aging tank engines in every way imaginable, some for decades. And they didn’t even use proper diesel or gas—just impure crap like ‘bio-diesel’ squeezed from humans and plants.
“For Raptors who had to huddle through winter surrounded by hunks of metal, reusing that combustion heat was a must, but it’s half-incomplete vaporized fuel in there. Keuheheheh!”
That’s why he’d obsessed over securing this ‘weak point’ he’d wormed into. He’d wasted thirty precious engineers here—it was the Nest’s Achilles’ heel. Every other insulation pipe was safely buried in layers of metal walls, but this spot’s structural flaw meant auxiliary supports everywhere, leaving an empty space where the flammable gas lines had no choice but to be exposed.
“....Kept thinking about it. If someone’s coming to smash the Raptors, this is the only way in.”
So yeah, unfair as hell.
Walking corpse. Solo. About 50kg of personal gear. Max 90 minutes left to live.
And the worst bomb maniac in human history, who’d spent every night since the screams of his wife and daughter’s deaths hating the Raptor Society.
“Heheheheh.... Against that bomb maniac Ashfield, and they send a measly 30-man standby squad...!”
Drip drip—
Blood poured from his nose, body swaying, but Ian locked his buckling knees.
Suuuuuuck—
Fuuuuuuu.
The deeply inhaled cigarette smoke billowed out through holes in his cheeks, throat, and lungs.
“....Today’s the day I die.”
Thanks to just a partial collapse, drugged-up Raptor slave soldiers swarmed from the intact sections like ants.
“Ashfield. Ian Desmond. Metal Joe. All three of ‘em die here.”
Ian spat out the filter-burned cigarette.
Straightened his trembling knees, wiped the blood from his nose, gripped his guns in both hands.
“So forgive the unfairness.”
Bang bang—!
He hurled himself at the wall of humanity closing in.
He would die. In about 90 minutes, maybe right now.
So the Raptor Society he’d built, and every piece of trash dumped in that shithole—they’d all die here too.
He wouldn’t become a monster. There were moments he yearned to go back with burning regret, but he’d long accepted it as karma for his murders. Human Ian Desmond had already been a monster.
“You fucking idiots....”
So even if he was dying, even if there were endless enemies,
Kwaaaang!
“....Try and kill me. Go on, kill me! Come on, fucking kill me!”
This place was the fortress he’d poured his soul into back then.
“Keuheheheheh! Heh, hahahahahaha!”
And he was history’s worst bomb maniac, who’d killed the most people with gunpowder.
—Ting
.
.
.
.
Kwang! Kwagwagwagwang—!
This place built from war machines had over 30% of its area packed with explosives and powder.
The gun in his hand. Grenades. Frag grenades. All just fuses.
The bomb he’d prepared was this massive powder keg called the ‘Raptor Nest.’
He knew every inch of its structure, had spent nearly ten years dreaming of how to blow it sky-high.
The biggest bomb in Metal Joe’s life.
****
Kuuuuung—
At the pinnacle of Next Space, the spaceship base. On the long iron railing linking ship and base.
Kwang—!
Screeeeech—
“Amazing. Truly astounding...!”
The man, suiting up in a spacesuit with his men’s help, forgot the urgency and couldn’t tear his eyes from beyond the railing.
Kwaaaang!
The massive explosions shook even the Next Space building behind the Nest.
With a heavy rumble, part of the Nest crumbled. The raw tearing of composite armor clawed the wasteland sharply, but the hundreds of screams buried in an instant leaked out faint and muffled.
If the left side was collapsing majestically, the right was falling the textbook way. Exosuit squads exploited a lull in the assault to seize tank entrances, Dome elite agents with optical weapons clashed with inner forces, methodically pushing deeper. In such tight quarters, Dome’s personally shielded troops had the edge in infantry combat.
At the front—the spark of it all. Professor, who’d shattered the Raptor’s main tank force with bizarre barrages, was now covered in crystalline blood clots, barely able to move. Look close, and you’d see his rigid body inching this way.
“Faster than expected, and disappointingly so. The Raptors had uses planned after today.”
Half Raptor, half Gedroits, he frowned slightly at the developments exceeding his predictions—while failing to hide his joy. His eyes were nailed to the monster whose body was hardening, fully embodying ‘that world’s’ form: Professor.
“You’ve reached achievements even I couldn’t...! It was the right answer after all. The right answer! Professor! You’re the right answer! This time, this time we’ve finally found proper results! Me, at last!”
Look at that. Even he, deemed generations beyond the current era by his knowledge, surpassed again in ways he’d never imagined.
The Raptors were a labored project, but just a tool in the end. Artist Union, Dome, this wasteland—all mere steps to the result.
The outcome of grinding it all down gladly. The sole achievement of human Andrey Gedroits was blooming before his eyes—no reason to care if a familiar tool broke.
Thud.
Crash!
“Huff, heuk, hurk, grrrlk, hurk!”
Shattering his life’s shining moment’s reverie came a man kicking the door to splinters.
“Intruder!”
“Sir, fall back! The enemy—”
Bang bang—!
The two aides blocking his path lost their heads in an instant. Gedroits, still staring beyond the railing, spoke without turning.
“Congratulations. Didn’t know who’d come first of the three, but you take first place. Desmond.”
“Metal Joe now. Changed my name, you fuck—”
Cough, cough cough! Kahak!
The man let the smoking shotgun drop limply from his grip.
Ian’s state was shocking enough to stir Gedroits’s scholarly side. More precisely, the sheer oddity that he was still standing.
“Full-body burns aside. Orbital fractures, left eye gone, protruding right eye suggests brain hemorrhage, multiple compound fractures.... Good lord. What the hell did you shove into that leg?”
“Like my third wife, a gun, you unlucky bastard—some asshole blew my leg off, but I ain’t crawling to you on it.”
“Why go that far?”
“‘Cause that nutless prick’s rampaging too much.... If I just flop around like this, I’ll end up as bait.”
Cough!
“Aah, can’t leave my buddy as bait. He staked his life coming out—nobody wants to be a side character.”
Every heaving breath filled his throat with bloody froth—lungs and guts shredded bad. Gedroits inwardly marveled at the man who’d jammed a gun into his shin like a prosthetic, barely clinging to life.
“Revenge, eh.... As expected of that legendary figure, Ashfield.”
“Fuck off with that noise.”
Grrrrlk, gulp!
Fuuuu....
Ian swallowed the rising blood, somehow steadying breaths half-sieved through punctured lungs.
“Heard Gustav got eaten by that crazy old priest bastard. Revenge? Fuck that—I ain’t low enough to burn revenge on some half-assed retard like that.”
“Then, perhaps for some grand cause...?”
“Grand cause my ass.”
Click!
Ian hooked his few remaining fingers on the trigger.
“Duty. The last duty left to me as head of the family.”
Bang bang!
The headshots ricocheted off the shield generating at Gedroits’s nose-tip.
“And a ticket to heaven. Saving as many as I killed? Looks like the only shot is bashing your skull in.”
It was probably the one reunion method Metal Joe had calculated meticulously with his wife.
His wife had been the perfect ‘angel in white.’ If she hadn’t gone to heaven upon death, heaven didn’t exist.
His daughter had died before facing the world’s filth. Obviously in heaven.
Him, Ian? Wasn’t he the villain competing for the hottest hell-pit with Hitler?
So this was it.
A way to save as many as he’d killed. No hell, at least mitigating to purgatory. A way to watch his wife and daughter’s traces from afar.
“Stop you, and Professor rides this to that server room or whatever.”
“That bastard’ll probably pull it off. His track record proves it.”
“....Tch. Thought better of you, but famed Ashfield’s lost his mind too.”
“Keuheheheh! What else you gonna think about before dying?!”
Bang!
Ian stomped forward hard.
Bullets won’t work.
No explosives. The rickety iron bridge from base to spaceship—this high up, one blast and the path collapses. With Professor coming here, couldn’t touch it.
So, what’s left.
“Guess I gotta beat your ass raw.”
Just hurl this busted body into close-quarters brawl.
Ian reached into his coat, and a bluish shield like Gedroits’s enveloped him.
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[Hey asshole! So you’re moving into my place?]
[What? I’ll live next door to you.]
[....You got shields? Mid-sized settlement shields?]
[Just use your small settlement one like always? You use yours. Me and Vex’ll use ours.]
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An old memory—not that old, but feeling like ancient history.
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[Idiot! Overlapping same shields messes the phase and neutralizes ‘em! Basic anti-shield combat doctrine—don’t you know?]
[Oh.]
[Oh.... S-sorry....]
[Aaaagh!]
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The reason he’d hoarded his shield till his body reached this state.
The exact moment he’d self-destructed on that hill that day, he’d vaguely recalled the shield’s rebound force. Experiment after experiment with Old Man Woojin, tweaking phases one by one, he’d finally matched it: the same phase as Gustav’s powerful personal shield.
“Shields cancel same shields...!”
Past experience, revenge failed once chewed over endlessly, birthed his final gambit. For the devil of the battlefield and this pinnacle-of-modern-science man, it was the most primal savagery imaginable.
“Keuheheheh! Gustav! That hill that day—like back then! This time it’ll hurt worse.”
Snap! Snap!
“‘Cause I brought a better jaw and teeth this time!”
Ian’s smile, most facial skin burned off by explosions, looked demonic.
Gustav. Revenge. Professor. World’s future. Server room. Thoughts flashed, but now it didn’t matter.
“Ah, ha....”
“My, Ashfield. All the you I liked is gone now?”
Gedroits’s mad-scientist face, the instant Ian charged, reverted to that unforgettable past Gustav—infinitely carefree, deeming all killing trivial.
“....Knew it, you’re in there!!”
Ian charged arms wide like a bear, and Gustav’s brass-knuckled fist flew at him.
—Rumble!
From Dome main camp, a massive thunderclap rose with head-hair-standing static.
Static just like from the gun case on Ian’s back.
“Dome.... No way!”
“Told you. No one’s here just to be bait.”
Too late when he realized.
"Boo-M"
Ian’s burned-raw face twisted savagely, joyfully.
That’s the kind of weapon it was.
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