Base Defense Battle (2)
Crrrk-k-k-k.
Squelch.
"Ugh!?"
I scraped the slime off my visor with a rubber glove and flung it to the floor.
I'd never cleaned a crab or lobster myself before.
But if I ever did, it would probably feel a lot like this.
"Hyunwoo."
"Yeah."
"Hold this for me."
Scritch, scritch, scritch, scritch…
While Sara and I grunted and strained to peel away the carapace, Angela carefully tore open the softer skin with a scalpel and forceps.
She pinned the specimen down with nails almost thick enough to be spikes, then probed the internal organs and took notes.
"Hmm… Maybe because it feels so much like an insect. The internal organs really are nothing like an animal's…"
Her background as a veterinarian seemed to be paying off in this particular field.
Especially—
Crrrack-k-k-k.
—ever since she had stepped away from idealism, there was no hesitation left in her movements.
She dug through organs, sliced them free with the blade, and let her body get smeared green, yet Angela never paused. She just kept pushing deeper into the spider.
"…Hey."
I had been staring blankly at her work when Sara's sharp call snapped me back.
"Sorry."
"Hurry up. Once the Rangers get back with the goods, we've got more work waiting."
I took the knife she handed me and slid the edge between the plates of carapace.
If you scraped away the white, thread-like strands connecting flesh to shell one by one, the heavy armor slowly came free.
Thud-ud-ud. Thud. Crunch… Clatter.
Another shell hit the floor.
…Looking at the stripped, pale corpses left behind, my head started to get complicated.
Now that we knew the spider swarm had nested somewhere along Passages 1, 2, and 3, we couldn't simply leave them alone the way we had with the Nightcrawlers.
Once they realized their own had been hit, there were only two possible reactions.
Stay away—or try to eliminate the threat.
And creatures already driven into a corner hard enough to stage a mass migration… would they really choose to run?
"…Come to think of it, we'll need an incinerator too."
"An incinerator?"
"Yeah. Build one… or find one."
"That manhole exit from last time—"
Clink.
The sudden sound made me look at Angela in surprise.
She had dropped her scalpel.
"…I'm sorry."
She bent, picked it up, and went right back to the dissection.
"…The manhole exit. If one exists, it'll be somewhere near there."
"The Rangers' to-do list just got longer. Not even sure how fast they can dig up AK rifles."
"Those should be easy enough. Plenty of people around here like Russian weapons more than you'd think. Gun shops stock Chinese, Eastern European, Russian… even modernized American company models that take all sorts of attachments."
"I know that."
In the game, too, there had been every variety—modernized, civilian, standard-issue…
Some people even started playing just because you could customize firearms in such detail despite the top-down view.
"You know, so why?"
"On the surface, sure. But underground it's mostly U.S.… huff… U.S. government issue. Even if we find an armory, will there actually be any?"
That was how it worked in the game.
In the game.
"Or survivors like us will have brought them in. Grab that side."
"…They might strip them off corpses."
"Maybe."
Crrrk-k-k.
That made sense too.
Anyway, once we asked, they would bring something back one way or another.
"Looting…"
"Hm?"
Angela, sketching and writing in her notebook, tossed out the single word almost in passing.
There was something faintly unsettling about the slightly vacant look in her eyes.
"If it's something we truly need, taking it from other people is also a method."
"…Uh."
"If… that person happened to be a raider. Or a bad person. If not… there's always trading, of course…. But there must be people underground who attack without reason, like the cultists, right?"
I lifted my visor.
"This is for our sake, after all. So I'm not saying we should take from everyone no matter what—but if they're bad people, if they have evil hearts, then it would be more beneficial for us to put those things to use. Better that than simply allowing them to keep shooting other people."
Sara lifted her own visor and looked at Angela.
"I'm sorry. Was that… a little out of the blue?"
Back then she had asked whether we really had to do that to the soldiers of the Zeroth Reich.
And now this awkward little smile.
"No, you're not wrong. The cannibals might have some too. And if they do, we might take them by force."
She wasn't wrong.
So why did hearing it come from Angela feel so strangely out of place?
Whiiiiirrr.
I powered up the grinder, pulled on my gas mask, and lowered the visor.
Grrraaaak-k-k-k.
I started shaping one of the larger plates into a shield that could strap to an arm.
Beside me, Sara helped.
"Hooo…"
Outside, people were filling buckets with slime and scrubbing the ruined floor.
Busywork, sure—but having the Newman family around was a genuine help.
They did it diligently, without complaint.
Whiiiiir…
"How's this look?"
Sara held up the broad piece with both hands. In a way, it looked a lot like a ballistic plate.
"How much digestive fluid do they spit, exactly?"
"…They aim for the legs and torso when they vomit it, so the goal is something we can add onto shin guards and boots. The torso gets protected by the shield."
"Right? Hauling this around strapped to your body would be inhumanly heavy. If it's just slotted in like a plate, maybe."
She tried it against her arm, moved around a bit, thought it over, then nodded.
"Though that's only true by your low-stamina standards. At this size, the Rangers or my dad could still move fine."
"…The heavier it gets, the more attacks you can't dodge. I told you. They shoot webs too."
"Yeah, fair."
I never expected designing weapons and armor to turn into such complicated work.
Still, slowly fitting everything to the body was part of the process, I supposed.
Knock, knock, knock.
"Come in!"
The door opened to reveal Angela holding her notebook.
She still had the white kerchief wrapped around her head.
"…I hope I didn't interrupt your work?"
"We were just talking design. It's fine."
"Alright then."
She set the notebook in front of us and showed me a detailed anatomical drawing.
Why were so many people around here good at drawing?
"…You drew it disgustingly well."
"Might as well make it perfect. Um, Hyunwoo. Do we absolutely need to make shotguns?"
"Against things that swarm in numbers, the only ammo I can make and shoot right away is what I craft myself. Why?"
Her fingertip pointed at the carapace.
"Spiders still have to move, so there are gaps between the plates. And spiders don't breathe through their mouths."
"…Then where?"
"Normally it would be the skin, but because of the carapace, small, bumpy holes for breathing have formed in the joint gaps and along the thinner underside of the abdomen."
When I raised my visor, Angela flipped the notebook and showed me enlarged drawings of the spiracles.
"That's why they have to move so slowly. Their bigger bodies generate a lot more heat, and the armor is heavy, so they need to breathe longer and deeper. But… there just aren't enough breathing holes. The weight has almost multiplied several times over, yet the holes haven't."
"Hyunwoo said that before. They're sluggish because they're heavy."
As I listened, a weapon I had stashed in the warehouse suddenly came to mind.
The flamethrower we had used to turn the meat-blob monsters into ash.
"Then… if we use fire."
"Exactly. Of course, using it when our own sector is under attack would just make the damage worse, but at the very least, setting a few passages on fire might hold them better than hauling heavy machine guns around everywhere, don't you think?"
"True, but then we wouldn't have any air left to breathe either. Laying air tanks all over the place gets complicated."
"…Ah, the smoke. Hmm…"
It had sounded tempting for a second, but Sara's point sorted my thoughts right away.
The reason we stuck to poles and guns against the spiders.
Once fire and smoke filled a bunker, anyone without an air tank went down—including the person doing the shooting.
That said, it didn't mean fire was completely off the table.
We had air tanks, and we had five elite combatants who could still move fast even under the weight of those tanks and body armor.
Thinking that way, fire suddenly looked very attractive.
Attractive enough that I started wondering why, even after two thousand hours, I had never used something so lethal against the spiders.
I had recruited a doctor early and kept research running—so how had I missed this?
Because a wrong fire would just asphyxiate everyone?
Or because of weight limits?
"Then I guess we're stuck with guns after all…"
"We can still use it as offensive support. We don't even need the flamethrower. Molotovs should work."
Either way, I made the call.
These weren't the "King of Rats," which had been nothing but disgusting and slow, and there was no telling what a web shot would do to someone carrying a flamethrower.
Better to use Molotovs you could throw fast and keep moving.
"…Molotovs. That works too. Not bad."
"Fill them with napalm like last time?"
"You said napalm sticks and clings, right? That would make it even more effective. Honestly, just starving them of air with plain fire might drop them in place before they can even move."
Automatic shotguns plus Molotovs.
Plus arm-mounted shields and armor plated only on the legs for mobility.
That ought to be enough.
"That helped a lot. Thanks, Angela."
"…I think I'm the one who benefited more."
She placed a hand over her chest and smiled so brightly that my own mouth twitched upward without permission.
I was still wearing the gas mask for the grinding work, so she couldn't see my face.
Her suggestions kept getting more extreme, yet she herself seemed to be growing brighter. I supposed that was something to be glad about…?
"Alright, alright. Now we've got Molotovs to make too. Back to work."
"Ah, yes. I'll tidy my notes a little longer, then. If I find any more weak points, I'll let you know right away."
At Sara's prodding, Angela left at once and carefully closed the door behind her.
Sara had been about to lower her visor again when she turned back to me and tilted her head.
"She wasn't always like that, was she? Am I imagining things?"
"No. She really wasn't always like that."
"…Weird. People really do change."
She nodded blankly for a moment, then patted my shoulder.
"Well, it's a good thing. At least she won't be holding us back anymore."
"She was just too soft-hearted and tried to be good to everyone. The part of her that wanted to be useful is still the same… I think."
Sara stared straight at me.
And then—
"Aaagh!?"
"Talking about another woman when there's one right in front of you!?"
She stepped on my foot.
It didn't hurt that much, but enough to make me yell.
"Get to work already! Now we've got to make napalm for the Molotovs—why are you dragging your feet like this?!"
At the barked order I immediately flipped the grinder back on, and Sara went to check the drums of napalm stored in the corner.
"I'll go collect every glass bottle I can find. Cloth too, right?"
"Right."
"Busy, busy…"
Sara hurried out the door.
Watching her automatically start gathering materials, I realized she was getting more and more comfortable with crafting.
Even after all the mistakes along the way, she had stayed by my side and learned the work diligently. I was simply grateful for that.
…I set the carapace against the grinder.
Ssssssshhhhh.
I was starting to feel like we were actually making progress.
Our tech.
And our people.