Chapter 61
Chapter 61
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: uly
Chapter: 61
Chapter Title: Air Raid
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The uncertain crisis of whether it would come or not.
"Hmm...."
I revealed what I wanted.
Because of secrets I couldn't disclose, I'd cut out quite a bit of context beforehand, so even to a close friend, it could come across as an incredibly rude request.
But Sahim showed a thoughtful expression first.
Honestly, I figured success as long as he didn't get mad.
It was that big a deal.
"Is that all?"
"For now."
"I'll do what I can."
"...Really?"
"It's a request from a close friend. I could grant even more than that."
It felt too embarrassing to wrap it up with just a simple thank you.
And I doubted that's what he wanted anyway.
"...What was the next thing you said I had to read?"
"It's here."
*'Views on the efficiency and scalability provided by the lattice structure of molecules in biometal'*
The title was ridiculously long.
As long as the title was long, the formulas were hellish, which was why I'd shoved it to the very bottom on purpose.
"Bi-armor suit development is on track, right? It's your lab's project—you should know this field as well as anyone."
"That's true, but...."
I reluctantly took the memory stick Sahim held out and plugged it into the panel.
Then, with Sahim's lecture backing me up, I powered through the paper.
All while hiding my inner gloom.
*I'm a liberal arts guy.*
A writer who'd picked liberal arts precisely because he hated math.
Today, once again tormented by equations and numbers.
*
Boom! Crash!
The relentless explosions battered his ears without mercy.
The area was littered with corpses of grotesque experimental subjects—fusions of humans and aliens.
"That all?"
Naphrael spoke as he ground his foot into the head of the researcher sprawled before him, rubbing it like he was crushing a bug.
"...Kuhuk! You madman."
"Wow. Getting called a madman by you cultist scraps? What an honor."
Naphrael grinned and pressed down harder on the head.
In truth, from the researcher's perspective, Naphrael really was a madman.
Even if this was an Elohim Church branch, they'd rained bombs down on a city packed with civilians.
Without that, they might've slipped away in time—but everything had gone to hell.
"So, that all? Huh?"
"Khuhuhu. If the real deal was here, you'd already be dead."
"Really all of 'em? No last words? Die then."
Naphrael bore down with his foot.
The foot that pulped the head like tofu slammed into the floor.
Naphrael hadn't expected to pry anything useful out of this researcher anyway.
If he had the time for that, better to sift through the records scattered all over the place.
Whatever they'd done to the guy's head made interrogation impossible anyway, so he'd have needed to persuade him—but the odds of a straight answer from a fanatic were slim.
Even the collaborators they'd secured were just low-level scraps who didn't know much.
"How much longer?"
"Right here, sir."
A Monarch family private soldier approached and held out a grotesquely shaped object.
An information storage device used by the Elohim Church.
Its weird appearance meant most people wouldn't even recognize it if they found one—and even if they did, decoding it required specialized gear, leaving it useless.
"Jackpot this time?"
Naphrael pulled something from his pocket.
A custom reader his family's researchers had whipped up under intense pressure.
It had some long official name originally, but all that mattered to Naphrael was performance, so he'd stripped the label and just called it the reader.
Developed from research data scavenged after smashing a few Elohim branches.
The researcher probably had no clue it even existed.
He activated the reader.
A prism beam shot from the device, weaving intricately into the storage unit.
Moments later, the extracted records beamed to his panel.
"Ha....?"
Naphrael's face twisted sideways as he scanned the records on the spot.
"Would you look at that?"
After a moment's thought, Naphrael gave the soldier an order.
"Get me the planetary top committee member."
"Now, sir? We're running jamming in this sector right now...."
"Kill it. This takes priority."
"Yes, sir!"
Dropping the jamming would mean news of their sudden military op hits the wires, exposing their activities.
They'd minimized civilian casualties, but zero was impossible—if word got out this was a Monarch family op, it'd dent the family's rep.
But Naphrael was confident he could keep it buried to the end.
"Ah, Top Committee Member Bardro?"
While barking orders to his soldiers, he laid out his request to Bardro.
Urgent business—open an Astral Dimension link for real-time comms.
The top member balked.
Even he couldn't meddle lightly with Drive Gate operations.
One slip and it could spiral into a disaster.
But Naphrael's assurances and persuasion wore him down, and he granted permission with obvious reluctance.
"Yes. I'll circle back for sure."
Once he confirmed the real-time line opening, Naphrael cut the comm.
"Stupid old geezers. No wonder trash like this runs wild in their turf."
Unfiltered cursing.
Elohim activities were secretive, sure—but setting up shop smack in the middle of a city and no one notices? Absurd.
In the end, they were idiots who dumped the cleanup on everyone else.
The planet's assemblymen ought to be kissing his feet.
"Uh, relay to the cross sector and the academy. ...The principal, obviously, you moron. Promise whatever, throw out a blank check—just get it there fast!"
Unfortunately, even risking the exposure for this comm, he couldn't link straight to the target.
This planet was on the outskirts.
Getting word to Terra planet's main line meant hopping through several relays.
Even if it went smooth, it might take a full day or more.
"Anyway. Compared to me, these guys are the real lunatics."
Calling it an insane stunt didn't even cover it.
Naphrael felt a thrill building for the massive event about to unfold.
*'How'd brother know about this?'*
Doubt bubbled up.
The contact had come about a month back.
The old Monarch family never would've entertained such a request—but Naphrael had accepted without hesitation.
Even knowing failure could shake his own position.
Back then, he'd figured success was gravy, failure just meant a debt—fine either way.
Time to rethink that.
"Retreat prep complete."
Naphrael couldn't hold back the laughter, giggling for a good long while.
He ignored the soldier fidgeting in front of him.
"Don't die on me, brother. We'd only get more fun out of it."
His gaze pierced the gaping hole in the ceiling, reaching the sky.
From above, his personal shuttle descended for extraction.
*
Time flowed smoothly.
Just three days until finals.
This semester lacked the explosive growth of the last, but it had been a vital period of maturation amid the calm.
Core weapons would issue right after finals.
Then a month of adaptation training before frontline deployment and real combat.
Everyone showed intense interest in their assignments.
"What's the finals gonna be?"
"Saw a massive transport ship the other day. Could be big-scale."
I knew what was in the massive transport the cadets were buzzing about.
Roughly 30,000 combat mechs.
Even if for the test, that was an insane number.
"Focus on the lesson."
The instructor bellowed the warning.
The chattering cadets, distracted by side chatter, finally snapped to attention.
The current class was 'Anti-Air Gunnery.'
It covered everything from personal firearms to dedicated AA heavy gear—learning and hands-on with all current military weapon systems for shooting down aerial targets.
Today was the finale, doubling as the test.
Company-level squads were running Flying Jack drills.
Flying Jack was a rectangular portable launcher—2.5 meters long, 1 meter wide and thick—normally assigned to company specialists.
At 200 kilos, it was designed so even standard infantry could carry and maneuver it in an armor suit.
Inside was a mini-factory that could instantly tweak warhead properties, shapes, and post-detonation effects based on the target.
Max loadout: 100 rounds. Once fired, it had to be recovered and reprocessed at the rear for reuse—but its effectiveness made it a favorite.
*'The key's warhead tuning.'*
That's why specialists existed: the tuning complexity.
Every enemy contact, you had to coordinate the most effective payload on the fly—tough without deep expertise.
Sure, you could feed battlefield data to an AI for it.
But battlefields always threw 'exceptional situations' your way.
Hence, Flying Jacks always needed a specialist for peak efficiency.
"I suck at this crap."
"Why's Leonard so damn good?"
The better you knew aliens, the bigger the edge in operation.
Especially for me—my alien studies outstripped even Sahim.
Warhead tuning? Piece of cake.
I tuned without hesitation.
I didn't know every alien type cold yet, but the example difficulty? No sweat.
All that built-up knowledge was paying off.
-All Clear! Point +11
-Total Point: +32
-Ranking No: 1
I'd nailed every holo-drone tracking the sample alien's flight path.
Top score so far.
With over 40 rounds left, more points on the table.
"Lucky. Right up my alley."
"Tch! I'll catch you."
Runshin fiddled irritably with his Flying Jack, nerves on edge.
His turn had wrapped before mine.
Score: a hair over half of mine.
Big gap already, but he wasn't quitting—pure competitive fire.
Giz piped up to him.
"You're done already."
"What? Stay out of it."
"Lost to me—no shot at the captain. Give it up."
"You oversized lump!"
The two launched into another spat.
But Giz had the upper hand.
People misjudged Giz from his hulking build and gruff speech—he was sharp as hell.
Theory scores in the top ranks, and his instincts? Razor-sharp.
No wonder iron giant martial artists got called sly bears.
"Let him be, Giz. He might nail it next round?"
"False hope's cruel. Captain."
"Uh...."
Runshin stood there, speechless, glaring daggers at Giz and trembling.
Pure disbelief on his face.
*'Lately, it's always like this.'*
Somehow, Giz had become Runshin's natural counter.
Constantly fielding his jabs like man-marking defense had honed the skill.
Made things easy for me—no urge to step in.
*'Still...'*
When the Elohim Church name dropped, I'd been terrified something would blow up right then.
Nothing had happened since, so I'd relaxed—but why the unease now?
As that thought hit, I looked up.
The sky was warping.
"Huh? What's that?"
The other cadets, already skyward for the AA test, spotted it too.
Then a piercing siren wailed, and a hole ripped open in the sky.
-Warning! Warning!
Tactical goggles flashed red danger alerts, auto-loading evac routes.
But not a single cadet bolted.
Something even more shocking was unfolding overhead.
"It's dropping!"
Things poured from the hole, gravity yanking them toward the academy.
Elongated peach-pit shapes, gleaming in that sickening fleshy pink that screamed alien.
*'Assault Egg'*
Bio-pods for deploying aliens.
Dozens to over a hundred per egg.
*'It came after all...!'*
The original plot hadn't budged.
In this timeline, history pinned two massive incidents as the big ones.
The 4th defense line collapse—already happened—and the alien surprise air raid on Terra.
Especially wild: with the 3rd line intact, aliens hitting Terra dead-center in the 2nd line zone. Huge controversy.
Spawned fresh theories on alien motives and paths.
*'Not the point right now.'*
I locked eyes on the sky.
Sirens still blaring chaos.
Good news: first wave of Assault Eggs fully intercepted by auto-defenses.
But before relief could settle, wave two launched—way bigger.