The Violence Express
When Jincheon finished off the giant Crypter, B-5 — who had disliked Jincheon's group from the start — was too busy mowing down the endless swarm with his laser gatling to spare a thought for anything else.
He knew something was happening behind him, but even a glance away would let the Crypters close the distance. So he kept his eyes locked forward, focused entirely on his assigned sector.
Click. Click.
"Reloading!"
The moment his laser gatling's power pack ran dry, he called for covering fire and started the swap.
Whoosh—!
From the darkness, a tentacle as thick as a human head shot toward him, flipping open a maw lined with countless shark-like teeth straight at his face.
Crunch! Crrrunch!
"Aaaagh! H-help me!!"
His battle suit's helmet kept his face from being turned into Swiss cheese, but the sight of those razor teeth chewing through the helmet, trying to eat him alive, tore a scream from his throat.
Shhk!
Something was severed with a clean slice, and B-5 tumbled gracelessly to the ground.
Feeling the suction on his face vanish, he tore the severed tentacle-head off with a snarl of irritation.
"You okay? Reload, now!"
The first thing he saw was Heliane, standing between him and the swarm.
Biting his lip at the fact that he'd been saved by the very people he'd looked down on, B-5 reloaded the gatling's power pack with a scowl directed entirely at himself.
The instant he raised the gatling again—
Whoom-whoom-whoom-whoom!
Heliane was carving Crypters into pieces, and for a moment B-5's expression went completely blank.
Calsira and Jincheon were using a laser sword and a laser pistol respectively — but Heliane was wielding four laser swords at once.
She whirled all four arms in a dazzling storm, slicing apart the endless tide of Crypters without giving an inch of ground.
With this power, I could keep this up all day!
Using Inner Qi in real combat for the first time, Heliane's face lit up with exhilaration as she moved at a speed that put everything she'd ever done before to shame.
"Kyaaaak!"
"Grrrk!"
Front. Left. Right.
Crypters lunged from three directions at once, razor claws swinging.
Normally she would have dodged first and counterattacked — but—
Too slow.
With her vision enhanced by Inner Qi, the Crypters' movements looked so sluggish she seriously wondered if they were joking.
Sizzle! Sizz-sizzle!
Four laser swords severed the arms swinging at her, then carved straight through the Crypters' bodies in the same motion.
It sounds long when described — but to everyone watching, it looked like her arms had suddenly doubled in number and sheared through limbs and torsos in a single blink.
"Haaah!"
Crackle! PING!
On another front, Calsira was holding her sector perfectly with laser sword and laser pistol combined.
With the two women locking down a direction each, Team 2's mercenaries started to regain some breathing room — until—
"Boss! The shield!"
Crypters firing through the corpses of soldiers began cracking the frontal shield, and crisis came roaring back.
"Five! Eight! Cover the front—!"
"No need."
The Team 2 leader called for the two men who'd been freed up by Heliane and Calsira — but Jincheon cut him off and strode straight toward the front.
"W-wait, no!"
The man was monstrously strong, sure — but tanking a storm of minigun and hybrid-gun fire at hundreds of rounds per second was a completely different problem.
The leader tried to stop Jincheon as he vaulted past the shield—
KAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKANG!
"Wh… wha… what…?"
Jincheon's right arm seemed to vanish — and a fan-shaped spray of countless bullets slammed into the walls instead. The leader could only stare in stunned disbelief.
Jincheon casually swatted aside every round concentrated on him with one hand — then his position shifted in a blur.
Straight in front of the battle suit firing the minigun.
"Kr… kraa…!?"
The Mother piloting the dead soldier's battle suit was a full beat late processing the impossible situation. It finally ejected a plasma sword from the suit's forearm—
"Hup."
KRAAAAAAASH!
With a light shout, Jincheon's fist drove into the abdomen. A sound like the air itself exploding tore outward, and everything around the point of impact disintegrated under the raw shockwave — corpses, weapons, battle suit, all of it.
"……."
Staring at the perfectly cleared front, the Team 2 leader wondered if he was dreaming and slapped himself across the face.
"Ghk…!"
He'd hit himself too hard. The inside of his mouth split, blood running down his lip.
"Ah, right. I was gonna show you a twelve-out-of-ten badass and completely forgot."
Jincheon scolded himself with a playful look — he'd meant to put on a proper tear-them-apart, twelve-out-of-ten performance and had blanked on the theatrics.
Urgent radio calls came in from Teams 1 and 3 at the same time.
"Heliane, Calsira. Watch my back."
"Got it!"
"Hurry back!"
The first wave had ended. Having burned through their ammunition, the Mother was now sending in tougher-looking Crypters.
But Heliane and Calsira — Inner Qi flowing, nano-suits and enhancements stacked — were carving through them without so much as a scratch.
Leaving Team 2's safety in their hands, Jincheon dropped into a slight crouch from a hands-behind-his-back stance.
"Wait! If you're going to reinforce the other teams—!"
The Team 2 leader started to say they should all move together—
Whoom!
"Huh?"
A violent gust of wind, and Jincheon was simply gone. The leader's face went blank, as if he'd just seen a ghost.
"…What… did I just see…?"
Team 1.
"Kraaaaaah!"
"Goddamn it! Die! Just die already!!"
From the rear, a giant Crypter plated in massive iron sheets swung multiple razor-sharp arms, crushing their back line.
Tukakakakakang!
Kyaaaak!
Kieeek!
Crypters poured in from both flanks without pause, while the front was under concentrated fire from Crypters using soldiers' corpses.
All three teams had walked into the exact same tactic.
What put them in real danger, though, was the Crypter that had burst out from behind.
Kakakakak!
"Shit! That's Larium!"
"How the hell do we punch through that?!"
The giant Crypter wore Larium plating as armor, casually deflecting every round that hit it.
Larium — the material used in mecha construction. Punching through it with infantry heavy weapons was impossible.
"Damn it! Goddamn it!"
The mercenary holding the rear dodged with quick footwork, trying to pin the giant Crypter's movement as much as he could — but his wounds were stacking up. It was only a matter of time before he broke.
"Krgh!?"
Then the giant Crypter, receiving some command from the Mother, stopped attacking and turned to look behind it.
Or rather — it tried to look.
Shkakakakakak!
That was before its body was split clean in half, Larium plating and all.
"Uh…?"
"What…"
As the giant Crypter's body fell away in two neat halves, the mercenaries holding the rear went slack-jawed.
"The twelve-out-of-ten badass has arrived! Hahahahaha!"
"Y-you…!?"
Jincheon — who had bisected the giant Crypter with reinforced hands — swept his gaze across the battlefield in a flash.
They were somehow holding the flanks, but the front and rear blockades had them surrounded and bleeding out.
This side, then. In that case—
Punch through front and rear, and the mercenaries would breathe again and come back to life.
Jincheon leapt up, caught the ceiling, and dropped onto the front line in a single motion.
Zzing!
The moment he landed, he raised a laser sword and struck a pose so dramatic it looked straight out of a chuuni fever dream.
Tukakakakakang!
Through the eyes of the Crypters Jincheon had already killed, the Mother judged him a priority threat. It ordered the corpse-soldiers to back off and pour concentrated fire on him — this time pin-pointing face, shoulders, arms, elbows, hands, knees, feet, each one separately.
"Hahaha! So you figured out how to counter me, is that it?!"
Laughing freely, Jincheon charged like a highlight reel from a movie or anime — batting rounds aside with the laser sword, melting others mid-flight, spinning and twisting through the storm in a dazzling rush.
Click! FWOOOOSH—!
From behind, a battle suit that had been attacking halfheartedly flung both arms wide. Plasma flamethrowers erupted, engulfing Jincheon's body in fire.
"No!"
The Team 1 leader, who'd been watching in a daze as Jincheon dodged and deflected his way forward, screamed as the plasma flames swallowed him whole.
Whoosh!
But Jincheon burst out of the plasma fire without so much as a singed thread of clothing, let alone a burn.
KRA-CRACKLE!
He cleaved the flamethrower battle suit vertically — but the suit's built-in shield caught the laser sword.
"Ha. These bastards have zero sense of style. This is the part where you're supposed to split clean down the middle! Don't you know a half-and-half kill? Half-and-half?"
"KRAAAAAH!"
"Shut up!"
Jincheon tossed the laser sword aside and brought his fist down on the Crypter screeching at him.
CRUNCH!
"What the hell are you roaring about?!"
The Crypter piloting the battle suit had its head crumpled straight down into the suit, caved in to shoulder height.
Tukakakakang!
A normal enemy would have panicked. Crypters under the Mother's control simply opened fire on Jincheon again.
At the same instant, Jincheon threw punches into empty air so fast that dozens of afterimages bloomed around him.
PUPUPUPUPUPUNG!
Every fist carried a blast of fist-wind. Wherever it touched a Crypter, a hole the size of a human face punched clean through.
Incoming bullets mixed into the storm and simply ceased to exist.
"Heh heh heh. This is actually pretty fun."
Space monsters that had been hunting humans were now the ones being hunted.
Making real something that belonged in pure fantasy — no, something so absurd that even imagining it would get you told "Who the hell imagines crap like that?" — was pure entertainment to Jincheon. He opened Team 1's airway, then stepped into light-body technique again.
Whoom!
Vanishing on a hard gust of wind, Jincheon raced to Team 3, rescued them in the blink of an eye, and in a single stroke pulled all three teams out of crisis.
Judging that charging in any further was pointless, the Mother pulled the Crypters back, and the fighting settled for the moment.
The problem was that for Jincheon, this was only the real starting point.
Having saved Team 3, Jincheon checked his Bio Device and sprinted straight toward the power source.
"Wai—!"
"Hey!"
The last team he'd rescued tried to stop him as he charged alone into the dark — but of course he was gone into the shadows before they finished the sentence.
All three teams were safe. All that remained was to let them coast through the rest of this contract on easy mode.
As Jincheon ran alone into the darkness, a razor-tipped tentacle shot from a ventilation shaft.
Snap!
A finger-flick shockwave burst the tentacle's head apart.
A Crypter camouflaged perfectly against the metal wall lunged in ambush.
CRUNCH!
He seized its head, slammed it into the wall, and dragged it along like he was painting with it.
Fsssssssssk!
From holes in the floor, Crypters shaped like starfish — undersides bristling with countless sharp teeth — boiled up and leapt at him.
"Haht!"
PAAAAANG!
With a shout, he clapped his hands together, unleashing the subtle principle of sonic force. The starfish Crypters simply burst, reduced to bloody pulp.
"Oh yeah! Here comes the Violence Express!"
Spouting lines so cringeworthy they'd embarrass anyone who heard them, Jincheon charged on without a shred of shame.
KRAANG! KRANG! KRASH!
"Kraaaak!"
"Kreeeek!"
Judging him maximum threat priority, the Mother rallied every Crypter it had.
One after another, grotesque things straight out of a horror film smashed through doors and walls, surrounding him.
Jincheon only grinned wider and rolled his wrists left and right.
He hadn't run at full speed on purpose — so the Crypters would concentrate everything on him.
"Alright then. Time to properly enjoy this."
Until now he'd been holding back to keep the mercenaries alive.
Which meant Jincheon's real game was only just beginning.
"Kwehhek!"
First came a Crypter shaped like a rhinoceros, armored head to toe in thick shell.
What set it apart was the strong insectile quality — and a sharp hand jutting from each flank.
It charged with horn and hands together, intent on skewering him. The moment that charge was about to shatter Jincheon's body—
KRAANG! KRAJAK!
Jincheon stopped the rhino Crypter's charge with one foot, then seized the two arms trying to stab him and tore them clean off.
"Hup!"
He poured sword-qi into the ripped-off arms and brought them down on the thick dorsal shell. The rhino Crypter's body split left and right, filthy fluids spraying outward.
"Kikeeek!"
"Kraaak!"
Even with the rhino Crypter dead, the rest came on thick with murderous intent, charging Jincheon without hesitation.
"Hahahahaha! Yes! This is it! This is what makes it fun!"
They'd seen his power and still felt no fear — only a fierce will to kill him.
Mecha combat was fun, sure. But a slaughter against movie-and-game-style monsters set Jincheon's chest burning in an entirely different way.