Fire from the Sky
Creeeak—
With the scream of rusted hinges, a massive iron door swung open and a hulking man stepped through. In the gap between the doors, a glimpse of various torture devices could be seen.
The man wiped the blood splattered across his face with his forearm. The smeared crimson made him look like a demon straight out of hell.
"Haa…."
What a beautiful world.
He genuinely believed it. He had spent his life scrounging through back alleys, swallowing every curse and contemptuous glance thrown his way — but in a world like this, even he lived like one of the upper class, free to indulge in such 'special' hobbies.
His gut of lard wobbled as he lumbered forward, a mound of fat and bone in motion.
He'd had enough play. Now it was time to work. He stepped outside and headed toward his guard post.
Thud. Thud.
With a frame well over 140 kilograms, even his casual footsteps carried a heavy, bone-rattling vibration.
"Kak! Spit."
He passed the great wall stacked with zombie corpses and headed for his post, where he'd have to stand watch for three hours. Calling it a post was generous — in a world falling apart at the seams, who could ask for anything decent?
It amounted to sitting on the rooftop of a crumbling, dilapidated building, and that was that.
"Haaam. Hey. You two. Fight each other. You know what MMA is, right?"
"Guh."
"…."
If there was one small mercy, it was that the post came equipped with 'toys' to stave off boredom — a welfare perk for those on watch duty.
"What? Is what I said not clear enough?"
At the man's murderous, booming voice, the two bloodied men trembled in terror.
"Heh. Right. Winners deserve rewards. Of the two of you, whoever wins gets out of today's 'punishment time.'"
Two men who couldn't even keep their clothes on properly — two young brothers who were each other's only family — looked at one another with complicated eyes.
If it meant escaping 'punishment time' — which was torture in all but name — what wouldn't they do?
And yet.
They arrived at the very same resolve.
I have to be the one who loses.
The moment the elder brother gritted his teeth and forced his battered body upright—
"You think I was born yesterday?"
The hulk swung his fist at the pair.
"Crack!"
"Guhk…!"
The two young men went flying from the awakened man's iron-hard fist.
"Double punishment time for you two today. Actually, no — should I just send the ones who can't hold up straight to the disposal yard?"
One brother vomited blood, unable to come to his senses, while the other, watching his younger sibling, wept as he bit down on his lip.
How had it come to this?
When the zombies first overran the world, he had felt a despair unlike anything before. But even that hadn't compared to being captured by the Slatter horde.
At this point, maybe being alive is actually the worse….
Until now, they hadn't been able to end their lives recklessly — not while the other was held hostage. But he had realized that meant nothing anymore.
A world worse than hell itself.
Just as the elder brother steeled his resolve—
The giant's eyes gleamed.
Was this the first time something like this had happened? Of course not. He had fully anticipated the predictable little scheme they were attempting, and it disgusted him.
"Hmph."
Toys were plentiful. The nearby zombies had been cleaned out recently, and survivors had been crawling out of the woodwork.
So breaking a toy or two wasn't even worth calling a problem.
"Heh heh heh."
As the hulk closed in to beat the two to death, something caught his eye.
"Huh?"
Something was soaring serenely through the air, straight toward the headquarters of 'Ecstasy' — the largest and strongest of all the Slatter factions.
"A… fighter jet?"
The hulk rubbed his eyes, his mouth hanging wide open.
"Hey, what the hell is that thing?"
What he watched with bewilderment hovered utterly still in the sky, as if time itself had frozen around it. An alien, deeply unnatural motion.
Vuuuum—
Glittering particles of yellow and red light were gathering around the aircraft. It looked as though tens of thousands of shimmering embers were streaming toward it.
Even from a distance, the sight was impossible to miss. The headquarters must have spotted it too, because people began pouring out of the buildings, all of them staring at the sky with their mouths agape.
"What is that?"
It was as if every ray of sunlight in the world were converging on the aircraft.
Vuuuum—
The atmosphere, displaced by the swarm of light particles, stirred up even a faint breeze.
The hulking awakened man racked his memory, something tugging at the edges of his mind.
Ah — hadn't he heard some rumor a while back…?
Something about a plane going around cleaning up zombies?
Then why is it here? And in the sky directly above the camp, no less.
No matter how he looked at it, it did not seem friendly.
Just as he was frowning up at it in doubt, the light particles that had been swarming around the fighter came to a halt.
He couldn't say why, but every hair on his body stood on end. For an instant, it felt as though the world had stopped.
Armor panels across the aircraft's hull slid open.
Clack.
No sound reached him.
But.
Parrrts—
With a crackle of discharging current, a total of 128 streaks of light plunged toward the ground.
KA-BOOOM—
"Uh? Uh?"
The 128 red lines stretching down to the earth did not stay still. Like the psychedelic lights of a nightclub, the beams swept busily this way and that.
"Ah…."
The sight was so dazzlingly beautiful he couldn't tear his eyes away. The 128 crimson lines dancing across the sky were, in their own way, gorgeous.
But to the humans on the ground, they were nothing less than beams of death. And the red rays swept past, selecting only the Slatters.
Anything the light grazed burst instantly into flame and scattered as ash. D-rank or B-rank, death was meted out with perfect equality.
"RUUUN!!"
"Fucking hell!!"
"What IS that thing!"
"GUAAAAH!"
"My powers aren't working! We can't stop it!"
Chaos reigned on the ground. No matter what abilities they unleashed, the beams of death burned through them like slicing tofu, without the slightest resistance — and so they had to run like madmen.
"KYAAAAH!"
"Whuh—?!"
Occasionally, the beams swept past the captured slaves as well—
"Huh?"
"What the…?"
"D-did we survive?"
"Huhhuuuh."
—but like spirits, the light threaded around them without ever touching them.
It was around then that the hulking Slatter realized something had gone catastrophically, seriously wrong.
"What the f—… what the hell is going on?"
His eyes wavered with unease.
Power on a scale he had never witnessed before sent a cold chill through his chest.
"Sh… shit."
And yet, a thread of relief ran through him too.
"Good thing I wasn't outside, huh? I'd have been screwed."
But once that thought settled, a different one crept in. If all the executives died, wouldn't that mean climbing to a higher position himself?
That was as far as his dull mind got.
Twelve gun barrels emerged from the top of the fighter, and with the final parabola of a light-slung shell arcing across the sky, his body became something incapable of thought ever again. No — to be precise, it was vaporized without even leaving a corpse behind.
"GUAAAAH!!"
"R-run! Run!"
"Move, damn it!"
At the headquarters of 'Ecstasy,' curses and screams filled the air in a tangled melee.
Even amid the chaos of awakened and ordinary people alike scattering like rabbits, one man stood out — a towering figure over two meters tall, gazing up at the sky with sunken eyes.
He had founded 'Ecstasy,' led countless Slatters, and even earned himself the epithet of the Blue Reaper. Now he gripped his greatsword, wrestling down a rising sense of futility.
Over the past three years, he had cut down innumerable enemies and built his own small kingdom. And now that painstakingly raised kingdom was turning to ash before his eyes in a single instant.
All because of one damned, unidentified aircraft.
Did this make any sense at all?
It was firepower powerful enough that even an A-rank awakened couldn't withstand it.
Sure, it had grazed him once.
But he was an S-rank awakened — one whose body could transform into blue crystal harder than diamond, no less.
The moment the red beam touched him, it scattered and refracted, failing to deal any real damage. Apparently realizing it was useless against him, the red ray switched targets.
So he could call himself safe.
Even so—
"GUAAAHH! My arm! My arm!"
"Get clear, now!"
"RUN!"
"AAAAH!"
"Fall back to the boss!"
No one else could hold the line. There was no strategy, no counterplan. Was this truly how his three years of labor, his carefully built kingdom, had to be blown away?
Some tried to flee, but as they scrambled in every direction dodging the red beams, they were being herded, little by little, toward the center.
It was intelligent — and mercilessly thorough.
Then something caught his eye.
"Boss! F-for real. I don't think it's targeting us!"
"Wh-what is this? Did it come to save us?"
The moment he saw that the captured slaves were being left completely untouched, his eyes flashed.
"Everyone! Grab a hostage and block the attacks!"
At his lion-like roar, the panic-maddened Slatters gradually began to come to their senses.
"L-listen to the boss!"
"It's true! It's real! It doesn't target the slaves!"
In that instant, everyone scrambled to seize slaves as shields and hide behind them.
"KYAAAAH!"
"Please, help!"
"Ghk!"
They roughly hoisted hostages by their throats and slipped past the attacks.
Bzzzt— Weeeen— Bzzt—
Sure enough, the moment hostages were in hand, the attacks seemed to cease.
"It w-works!"
"Everyone, follow the boss's orders!"
Of course, not everyone could secure a hostage. The rat-like vermin had scattered and hidden all over the place, and there was no way for everyone to share the hostages in neighborly harmony.
"Out of my way, you bastard!"
"Ghk! Wh-what about me?!"
"Then go find your own!"
"Y-yes, sir! Understood!"
In the process, naturally, only the strongest survived.
Once everyone remaining had a hostage in hand, the beams of death were withdrawn.
The blue specter's eyes gleamed as he shouted urgently.
"Now it's our turn! Anyone who can attack at range, start intercepting that thing immediately!"
The leader of Ecstasy, the Blue Reaper, tilted his head back toward the aircraft and curled his lips into a grim smile.
"Little bastard. Think you can play the righteous avenger in front of us? Not a chance—"
He was about to say more, but his mouth snapped shut.
Clack— Whirrrr— Clack—
The fighter's outer armor began to shift with mechanical groans.
Clack— Whirr— Clack, clack.
"…."
At the sheer, overwhelming sight of the aircraft bristling with countless gun barrels like a hedgehog, the Blue Reaper felt his knees go weak.
No — could that thing even be called a fighter jet anymore?
At the very least, he didn't think so.