Galactic Assault and Recapture Battle (Part 2)
The stench of drugs rolled off the hippie terrorists in waves. Their passivity, their absolute fanaticism, had driven their minds clean past the point where compromise could possibly matter.
"Come out. If you won’t, I’ll come in and kill you all myself, you cowards."
And then, through the HUD etched into my corneas, I immediately identified the enemy positions, their weapons, and even their remaining ammunition. Without hesitation, I opened fire in controlled bursts at the enemies beyond the walls and buildings.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
"Ghhk!!!"
"Damn it, return fire!!"
"Go on, then. Try me. I’d never lose to trash like you—trash so inferior to me in every respect that you’re reduced to seething over it."
Once they realized hiding behind barriers was pointless, they decided to attack me head-on from multiple angles. Their trick was simple: make it look as though they were not retreating in a straight line or falling back en masse for long-range fire, so that my attention would be drawn only to their flanking attacks. Then, after baiting me into a predictable routine, they would suddenly surge in with brute force and overwhelm my response capacity.
But I perceived all of that at once through the slightest shifts in movement and a comparative analysis of their numbers. I twisted my arms and body, fired mercilessly toward the rear, and at the same time threw a grenade and a flashbang toward the front.
Boom.
"Urk!!"
Rattle-rattle-rattle.
Clack.
"I’ll kill you all in one go."
Boooom.
One punch from my extended left fist blew apart the head of a hippie terrorist. Immediately after, I rotated my whole body, drove a spinning back kick from my right leg into the jaw of the enemy on my left, tearing the jaw apart and triggering a torrent of blood. At the same time, I ripped my pistol free from the rifle with my right hand and fired a shot the instant my eyes found a target, putting a bullet through someone’s head. Then I drew a dagger from my waist with my left hand, stabbed it straight into the back of another man’s neck, and tore upward to decapitate him. Using the momentum of the turn, I drove the blade into the throats of every enemy within arm’s reach, killed them all, then whipped the blood into a spiraling spray and hurled it forward with all my strength, reaping dozens in a single throw.
Crack.
Whoosh.
Bang.
Clack.
Crack.
Snap.
Slice.
Whoosh.
Thud.
Stab.
Whirl...
Thump.
Craaack.
Flash.
Ffffffwoooooosh.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwaaaak!
"Aaaagh!!!"
Kwaaaaaaahhhhhhh!
An immense fountain of blood shot up into the sky. Carried by the momentum of that force, the bodies twisted and collided with one another, entangling themselves until a massive heap began to form in a single place.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Before long, machine guns joined the sniping from the rear, but by the time the flashbangs detonated, I had already slipped among the enemy lines. With me moving wildly through them, carving them apart and scattering blood in every direction, it was impossible to determine my exact position. Even the bullets they fired were blocked by the blood spray and the piles of corpses, not a single round reaching me.
Crash.
"Aaagh!!!"
"Take this!!!"
I leaped into the air, used my jump pack to slam down onto the enemy vehicles and crush them, then kicked the rebounding vehicle hard enough to send it flying into the rear.
Boom.
Whoooooooooosh.
Kwoooaaargh!
Whirl.
Crush.
"Aaaaargh!!!"
Bang.
Splat.
"Now then. From this point on, I’ll send you to the hell you actually belong in—the real one."
By now, enough time had passed for the Nanocrippler scattered from my body to begin activating within theirs. Anyone who understood its power would realize that dying by my hand would have been the kinder end.
Zzzzzzzzzzt.
"Krrrraaaagh!!!"
"Hack, hack!!!"
First, their consciousness began to be overridden; the so-called mental strength of human beings was openly gnawed away, and the resulting information poured straight back into my hands. Their memories were thrown into complete confusion, leaving them unable to feel anything at all when committing evil, while in any other state, extreme hatred and fury boiled up inside them and kept cutting short their lifespans. In the end, all they could do was vent their anger at once—and that meant turning their guns on one another.
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
What’s more, every one of their minds had originally been born from hatred and rage toward ordinary citizens who had been corrupted into machine-like specialists, so abandoning that emotion was impossible from the start.
"KRAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The moment the gunfire and shelling rang out, their pain-soaked howls faded as if they had never existed. They were too busy thinking only about how to kill their enemies without suffering the same pain themselves, and so even when they were wounded, not one of them screamed.
"Well? What do you think? That should be motivation enough, shouldn’t it? In times like these, anything unrelated to war is treated as meaningless. Even the people dragged away earlier would agree with that. The problem is simply that, even knowing this, you immediately branded me as someone who didn’t understand it, without considering a single other possibility."
"I... suppose so. After all, if anyone manages even one thing well here, people will say the situation is fitting together exactly as it should. They’ll praise themselves for all the good and dump all the bad on me, then pat themselves on the back as though they’d upheld order."
"If that is your conclusion, then I thank you. Now, let us go."
After sending Ermy Faust to Mephauric, I remained amid the bloodstained wreckage and looked over the enemy corpses, thinking.
Hah. An idol, was it? She’s already that perceptive. She was a girl with more pride than she pretended to have. Of course, in the five years since the Strange Zombie crisis began, there are certainly people whose judgment has gone to pieces because they’re panicking. That is also a problem. In the end, human beings must sort themselves out. And those who cannot endure that process and collapse before me in ruin—whether enemy or ally—are only worth so much, and no more. There is no reason to hesitate, and no reason to regret. I despise empty talk. Was it only two months ago? Yes—today is April 18, 2045 by Earth time, so that would make it February 4, 2045. That was when the territorial dispute erupted. We had already begun researching the non-material realm itself back in 2033, so commercializing portal technology was not difficult. And now the whole world will keep fighting through the equipment scattered everywhere, improving and modifying it all the while. The Third World War has only been underway for three days, so the damage is not yet severe, but the day will come when the appearance of a few Strange Zombie cannot be met with instant deployment. They will inevitably continue slaughtering one another in pursuit of profit, and I will have no choice but to engage not only my primary targets—the Strange Zombie—and my secondary targets—the hippie terrorists—but also the soldiers of sovereign states, not for peacekeeping, but for peace creation. We are going to be forced to kill people who have lived under the protection of the Diagrams of Mystery all this time—people no different from the retainers of our own house—as though they were tyrants. Damn it! What a waste of effort... Hah, and yet it is not meaningless to me personally. To be honest, I have feelings for the advisor. But she is far beyond where I can reach. And every time I look at the minister’s face, I can’t help thinking what on earth I could possibly do compared with him. That is why I came here to Mephauric—to be recognized by the minister as a useful person. Of course, I am also the head of the White family, and I have always liked the frontier spirit, and in the energy business I helped maintain American dollar hegemony and understood very well the importance of policing the world. It would be a waste of my abilities to live forever buried in paperwork. So perhaps one day... I might even confess to the advisor...
With that thought, I entered the terrorists’ hideout to gather intelligence from their corpses.
Filthy things. Emotion-starved hedonists, lying terminal patients with no pain, parasites who waste the entire universe—you were conducting rituals while burning drugs, just as expected. Their other base is on the planet Retrek, which has not yet suffered Strange Zombie contamination and therefore has not been assigned NATO-standard phonetic symbols and a four-digit identification number. They call their life of supposed oppression-free freedom, sexual debauchery, and drug-fueled rites a noble rebellion, but it is nothing more than a clumsy imitation of Native American life. Their loose clothing is just a stylized transformation of Native dress; their drug-induced spiritual liberation is a crude substitute for Native practices of meditation through smoke; and their wandering communal lifestyle is no different from the way Native peoples often moved their settlements. Whether these fools are right or wrong is beside the point. If they had truly succeeded, then when America was still a British colony, they could have simply followed the British government’s own claim and settled matters by debate in Parliament with representatives of the tribes. Besides, when white settlers took the land by force, they knew that act was wrong. But when they bought it with money, they felt no particular guilt. For them, the only thing that mattered was whether the land was mine or yours. The Native peoples, by contrast, knew that the land and the wilderness were never truly theirs to begin with, and yet they cherished and protected them all the more, because they understood it as their duty to live in coexistence with humanity. That is why, even after being defeated and massacred by the whites, they still carried guilt for failing in that duty—failing to cherish and defend what was precious even though it was not theirs alone. So if someone suddenly demands the land back again, the contradiction becomes obvious: how can you casually purchase nature in the first place? In other words, the Native peoples did not fight for possession of the land. They fought for their lives, their duty, and their convictions. The whites, on the other hand, fought to seize the land itself. So steel yourselves. You will bitterly regret failing to recognize me—me, who is called the Dark Lord by the Strange Zombie, even though I am nothing more than an ordinary human in appearance!
And so I headed for the planet Retrek.
It is a sad thing that so few know who I am... They know they need not die, and yet they choose the road to death anyway. Memory is only a series of distortions and embellishments, so there is no helping it.
Flashback: three days earlier
After Chief of Staff Ernest Rob’s speech ended, Minister of Defense Richard Jeracle Lennox gathered the mercenaries under my command separately and spoke.
"As a rule, do not engage the Strange Zombie on a large scale for now. Of course, that does not apply if they are openly threatening civilian lives. But if you encounter them while passing by and there is no direct contact, or if you spot them first, avoid combat whenever possible."
"What is the reason?"
"If we wipe out the Strange Zombie too completely from the start, the world will turn around and hurl abuse at us instead."
"Why would that be?"
"The Iraq War is the easiest example. President George W. Bush was, by all accounts, a man with a genuinely good character, and the grounds for naming the Axis of Evil were solid: they were illegally stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, constantly and brazenly defying the demands of the international community, and, beyond that, committing atrocities against their own people that deserved severe punishment. But for a war that began with such overwhelming justification and such profound purpose, it ended far too easily with an American victory. Worse, there were no weapons of mass destruction at all, so Bush ended up being mocked as though the weapons he spoke of were simply Iraq’s heat or AK-47s. On top of that, there was the problem of what to do with Saddam Hussein’s regime after we had taken it. If democracy had been firmly established, the matter could have been settled cleanly through elections, but Iraqis were split into Sunni and Shia, and they immediately started fighting over who would hold power. In trying to clean that up, the war in Afghanistan was left unfinished, and we ended up withdrawing in disgrace, practically driven out by the Taliban."
"Ah, I see. In the end, unless you intend to monopolize all power in the world, conflict will inevitably arise over handing authority back to civilians—and there’s no guarantee that process will proceed in a democratic way."
"Exactly. And if the repeated pattern becomes, 'We saw those Strange Zombie and executed them,' then naturally our strength will be magnified even further in the public eye, and that will automatically trigger caution toward that power."
"So the point is to prevent those kinds of arguments from ever taking shape in the first place. The hippie terrorists are the ones who caused this entire situation, but for now their influence is still weak, so we’ll focus only on the Strange Zombie. And depending on the situation, the use of psionic abilities is permitted as well. Everything else remains exactly as planned."
"Understood. In that case, leave it to us. We’ll cause as much destruction as possible until fear swells to the point where it crushes any sense of caution, and then we’ll use that fear to brand anyone who starts thrashing about as no different from the Strange Zombie."
"Good. And now for the most important point: from this point forward, planets contaminated by Strange Zombie shall be designated with a two-digit NATO standard symbol and a four-digit NATO standard number. The two digits in front will represent the tactical side: the initial damage caused at the moment contamination appears, classified by ascending risk; the two digits in back will represent the anticipated additional damage, also classified by ascending risk. The four digits after that are not to be spoken as a whole number. They are to be read one digit at a time, from 0000 to 9999, and they represent the quantity and quality of resources that must be投入— the strategic side. For example, if it is 0000, then no matter how great the damage may be or may become, it means that from a strategic standpoint we must leave it untouched. If it is 9999, then no matter how little damage it has caused or is expected to cause, it means immediate resolution is absolutely urgent from a strategic standpoint."
"Then for planets with no damage, may we just use the name as it is?"
"Yes."
With that, I led the mercenary unit straight to the designated area.
Flash.
"The contamination is severe...."
"Indeed."
"Well, there’s nothing to be lenient about. We end it here."
Clang.
I immediately summoned a massive anti-planet destruction sphere and launched a preemptive strike.
Kwoooaaarararararararararaaaang!
Slash.
Slash.
Clink.
Clink.
At the same time, the one hundred mechanical soldiers following behind me all generated sharp spikes from both hands and polished their blades to heighten the threat.
Swish.
Fwoooooooooosh.
Shaaaaack!
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat.
The spikes they hurled were not ordinary spikes, but cold weapons made by compressing the energy of the non-material realm into sharp solid form. For that reason, the Strange Zombie could not block them with their passive abilities.
"Aaaaaaaagh!!!!!!!!!!!"
Zzzzzzzzt.
As a result, their bodies were erased in an instant, as though fire had been set to their flesh.
Thump.
Thud.
Thud.
Kwoooaaararararararaaaang!
With the destruction sphere formed in my hand, I struck directly toward the ground, and the Strange Zombie hit by that attack were torn apart in miserable pieces.
Whoooooosh.
In that same state, I swept both arms wide and manipulated the radiation of the cosmos itself, causing the Strange Zombie’s movements to be sealed as their bodies were gradually ripped away.
"Eat this!!!"
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Wha...what...the hell...is that guy...!!!"
Without mercy, I bombarded them with black qi blasts from both hands, then radiated lasers from my eyes in every direction to oxidize them. Spinning once more, I spread all-around energy that devoured the white light nearby, and with a single strike I split their bodies in two and killed them.
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuun.
Whoooooooosh.
Paaaaaaaaaaah!
"Commence attack!!!"
"Yes!!!"
Shrrrk.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
My mechanical soldiers fired spikes from every part of their bodies.
"Aaaaaaaagh!!!!"