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Chapter 217 - The True Stars of the Show Finally Appear

Translator: SFBaka

『One Grappler is breaking through!』

『What about close air support!?』

『They still have their hands full!』

Zudodododo! The ground loudly shook and a monster with a height of 5 meters popped out from the depths of the dust cloud.

It had forelimbs covered with rocky carapace armor, multiple legs that looked like they could easily trample people to the ground, an eyeless face, and a drooling mouth lined with large human-like teeth. Its appearance easily induced a feeling of disgust.

“Hiro, we’ll handle that one.”

“We’re fighting that thing with swords? Are you insane?”

“Any lifeform, no matter how monstrous, will die once their head is cut off. I’ll attract its attention so make sure to follow after me.”

“Wai……!”

Lt. Col. Serena gripped her longsword with both hands and plunged straight toward the giant aggressive lifeform (Tentative name: Grappler). I immediately ran after her in a fluster. I can’t possibly leave it all up to her after all.

『GIEEEEEEE!』

I don’t know if Lt. Col. Serena’s white combat armor simply stood out too much, but the Grappler immediately zeroed in on her after unleashing a menacing cry and whipped out its armored forelimb. Dammit! It didn’t have eyes so how could it have spotted her so easily? It looked like it was rather eager to turn Lt. Col. Serena into minced meat with a single swing.

Its rock armored arm finally slammed onto the ground and caused soil, dust, and rock fragments to scatter around. Lt. Col. Serena’s figure vanished within the dust. It won’t be funny if she was done in with one swing, but through my universal mask’s HUD, I managed to spot Lt. Col. Serena successfully avoiding the monster’s arm smash and running around it.

As expected of high-tech equipment. It looks like this amount of smoke and dust is nothing.

“Hiyaah!”

A sword flashed and cut the creature’s arm that was still buried beneath the ground. It looks like in front of a blade that could easily cut open a power armor, mere flesh and bones weren’t even worth mentioning.

『GIYAAAAAA!?』

The Grappler started thrashing around as black blood spewed from its arm stump. And then, it brought down its remaining arm - the right one- straight at me.

“-Gh!”

I immediately held my breath and the world around me slowed down to a crawl. It was as if time was being stretched. I moved and shrugged off the air suffused with metallic sand clinging to my body and avoided the path of the creature’s arm. I then timed my sword swing so I could make use of the momentum of the creature’s arm to ensure I could cut it clean off.

I had to match the arm’s movement and cut it in a specific way so my sword blade wouldn’t break off. Plenty of blood spilled out from the arm once again and the Grappler screamed in pain.

『You did great. That was a perfect score.』

I heard Lt. Serena’s praise through the universal mask’s comm. I looked around to find out where she actually was and saw her on top of the Grappler’s shoulder. She probably ran up the Grappler’s body earlier.

『Haaah!』

She unleashed a vigorous slash. While standing on the Grappler’s shoulder, Lt. Col. Serena used her mono-molecular sword to cut off its head in one swing. The Grappler’s body immediately stiffened and started falling onto the ground.

Actually, It was about to fall right on top of me.

“Ah, dammit!”

I desperately ran away and managed to avoid the Grappler’s falling body. Lt. Col. Serena made a brilliant landing right beside me. Dammit. This person is really too much.

“You’re still so tense even at the very end of the battle huh.”

“Well, you can’t really compare an uncouth commoner mercenary like me to yourself who’s a refined noble daughter after all.”

“I didn’t say that to demean you. You’re unmistakably a qualified warrior who can overcome your fears to go against mighty enemies. It’s worthy of respect.”

After saying so, Lt. Col. Serena flashed me a gentle smile.

I feel like I’m just being strung along, but oh well. Even I would feel a bit embarrassed when given compliments like that.

“Ah, yeah. So what’s the current battle situation?”

“It looks like they’ve settled it on their end as well.”

The only giant creature that appeared was the Grappler we just defeated, and the other enemies consisted of dozens of Twisteds. It looks like the marines finished them off without any trouble.

“The support barrage was barely there. What the heck are you doing?”

『Sorry. That was my miss.』

Elma’s apologetic voice came through the comm. Well, it’s not like I was seriously mad anyway. There were quite a number of enemies after all, so I guess I can forgive her for letting one pass through.

Or rather, it wasn’t just Krishna that’s being piloted by Elma that was providing close air support. There were imperial military dropships and small combat craft as well. Beside me, Lt. Col. Serena was ordering her forces to make sure that the large creatures wouldn’t get through.

“It’s a bit of a waste, but just use the shot-cannons. It would be better than letting one of those get through again.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. We’ll cover the ammo you will use up during this operation.”

“You heard her. Don’t hold back and fire away.”

『Roger that. I’m gonna go at it then.』

Elma cut the call.

“Alright then. It looks like we’ll have to endure this situation for a while more huh……”

“Yes, for the time being.”

Ahead of us stood something that looked similar to a mountain - though clearly artificial - that was a bit obscured by the metallic dust storm.

After completing the investigation of the suppression ship, we set off once again in order to continue our pursuit, and we managed to find this place in the end. We dealt with a lot of twisted along the way mixed with a number of Grapplers just like the one we finished off earlier. After wading through the waves of enemy creatures, we finally managed to find this manmade structure out here.

“I wonder what the heck that is? An anthill?”

“In any case, it definitely serves as the creature’s nest. I’m sure the attacks would get more and more intense the closer we are to that structure.”

It resembled an anthill but scaled up to a ridiculous degree. According to the readings displayed on my universal mask’s HUD, its height was approximately 300 meters or so. It was shaped like an uneven mountain. Was it built using soil? Its color didn’t really resemble the color and appearance of the ground around it. It was mostly reddish-brown in color.

“So what are we gonna do about that? It’ll be simple enough to just blast it to bits, I think.”

No matter how huge it was, in the end, it was still made out of soil and rocks. It would be completely helpless in front of laser cannons that smash shields and punch through dense combat ship armor. It’s literally a tower made of sand.

“I’d like to do that if I could, but……”

“Do we really need to insist on capturing that guy? What was his name again? Uh, Geritz?”

“That’s how it is. Well, I’m not the only one insistent on the matter. The order came from the higher-ups.”

“But as we are now, I don’t think we have enough forces to break into their nest without the aid of close air support. Actually, it’s flat out impossible.”

Currently, it’s only thanks to the close air support from Krishna and the imperial combat ships that we are able to repel the attacks of the dangerous lifeforms crawling all over the place. If we were faced to deal with Grapplers along with the other creature types without air support, we’re basically doomed.

But, well, unlike the colonists armed with low-powered laser rifles, we have elite imperial marines from the Graccan empire with us. Their overall power, skills, and combat readiness are more than several leagues apart from the colonists. So if we were prepared to suffer casualties, we might just be able to barely pull it off.

“It’s alright. There are reinforcements coming very soon. Our advanced force is just responsible for finding the enemy base. The ones coming over are our main attack forces.”

“I see?”

I already think the marines accompanying us are plenty strong enough, but she’s actually saying the reinforcements will be even stronger? I tilted my head as Lt. Col. Serena seemingly received a transmission. She talked with the other party through her comm for a short while and then looked up at the sky.

“The main forces are here.”

“From the sky?”

I followed Lt. Col. Serena’s gaze and looked up at the sky. I managed to make out the imperial combat ships and drop ships hovering above us. And beyond them was an object that seemed to be rapidly descending.

“Oi, oi. Don’t tell me it’s an orbital bombardment?”

“No. As I said, it’s reinforcements.”

The object that was wrapped in crimson due to aerodynamic heating rapidly fell near the artificial structure ahead of us. It mercilessly crushed the earth beneath it and caused an explosion of dust and rocks. The ground beneath our feet shook from the impact.

“That’s one heck of a powerful entrance…… So, what the heck is that anyway?”

“Our main ground attack forces.”

“Ah, now I get it……”

The object that was now stuck on the ground resembled a giant metallic stake. An object fell off the stake and started to change form.

Yes. They were soldiers made of cold, hard advanced metal alloys that shed no blood or tears and didn’t have fear of injury or death. They were humanoid in shape, with a metallic skeletal frame much, much stronger than human bones enveloped in thick layers of metal alloy armor. They had muscle fibers made out of advanced metal alloys as well and could crush a regular human into meat paste with a single swing of their arm. They also wielded heavy-caliber weaponry that could never be used by regular flesh-and-blood humans.

The heights of these humanoid killing machines ranged from those roughly as tall as an adult humanoid to ones standing to a towering 5 meters.

“So it’s military combat bots.”

I was almost tempted to cry out T*tanfall![1] but I managed to hold myself back in the end.

“That’s right. Since we’ve mopped up the ones outside, we’ll just leave storming the base to them and watch from here.”

The armored marines started building a sturdy-looking temporary base camp again. I followed after Lt. Col. Serena and headed toward the camp being constructed by the combat engineers and their bots.

[1] TL Notes: Titanfall is a videogame series developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by EA that features the marriage of an FPS shooter, parkour, and giant hulking mechs called Titans. Whenever you called for your Titan, it falls from above; hence Titanfall. It was pretty fun too, though quite underrated/underplayed IMO. Anyway, I’ll always have fond memories of BT-7274 and Jack Cooper.