Dense chunks of metal tore through the air at supersonic speed and slammed into him in a continuous barrage, producing heavy, dull clanging sounds.
There was no need to dodge this metal storm. It simply did not have enough power to threaten the powered armor.
Even so, taking the barrage head-on still restricted his movements somewhat.
After all, when enough bullets struck with enough force, the accumulated inertia still added up to a considerable impact.
The reason Kain was seemingly foolish enough to march straight through the enemy's machine guns, pistols, rifles, and all the rest of their gunfire was simple.
He wanted to create terror.
If he dodged, the enemy would realize he was wary of bullets. They would think that by forcing him to evade, they could hurt him.
But if he advanced with what looked like an almost leisurely stride through the impact of countless rounds, those soldiers would gradually begin to fear him. They would come to see him as an indestructible killing machine.
Once that happened, their morale would take a devastating blow. The moment the first few men broke, panic would spread like wildfire, and the whole line would collapse like a landslide.
Suddenly, an RPG came screaming in.
Boom!!!
Fire and black smoke swallowed the metal monster in front of them, and every soldier stared with churning hope and dread.
They hoped that RPG had finally destroyed the thing.
They feared that once the fire and smoke cleared, the monster would still be standing there unharmed.
But before the smoke could even disperse, a figure pushed through it on its own and strode out.
The fear on their faces deepened instantly.
"You've got to be kidding me..."
"That still didn't hurt it?"
"What kind of monster is that?"
Then, all at once, the metal demon stopped stupidly taking their attacks head-on.
The humanoid metal monster raised an oversized handgun of unknown design and leveled the muzzle toward them.
It was about to attack.
Bang!
Who... who got hit?
The soldiers at the front, already panicking, instinctively glanced at the men on either side of them. Those two were still there.
But in the next instant, terrified screams came from behind.
When one of the soldiers turned, he saw that two men had somehow lost half their bodies. The wounds on what remained were glowing a hideous red, like iron taken fresh from a forge.
Bang!
Another heavy gunshot rang out from the metal monster.
This time, the soldier saw one of his comrades get swallowed in an orange-red flash and simply vanish.
At the same time, another man standing beside him lost part of a limb, as though that section had been vaporized out of existence.
W-What kind of weapon was that?
The terror made his whole body go limp, and he collapsed to the ground.
He could not even get back up.
Then he heard it.
The footsteps of the metal monster were drawing closer from behind, and his fear surged even higher.
The instant those heavy footsteps landed right beside him, he felt some kind of heat being released.
Then the thing walked right past him without even looking his way.
And he laughed.
He laughed and laughed and laughed.
The soldier's mind snapped.
"Move aside!!!"
At that roar, the soldiers who had already wanted nothing more than to get out of the way scattered without hesitation, allowing the dozens-of-tons tank behind them to roll up to the front.
Its cannon swung toward the metal monster, which was still advancing.
Boom!
A thunderous shot erupted, so loud it nearly ruptured their eardrums, and the ground itself shook from the recoil.
As for the monster...
Did the shot miss?
In the next second, strange explosions erupted on both sides behind the monster.
What was going on?
No one could understand it.
The tank loaded a second shell and fired again with another deafening blast.
Again, it missed.
Again, two strange explosions went off behind the metal monster.
And at last, some of the soldiers realized what they had just seen.
The monster was already holding a sword.
A sword, of all things. A cold weapon.
It had clearly made a slashing motion. And if that was combined with the fact that the tank shells should have struck directly but instead exploded in strange bursts behind it, then the truth could only be one thing.
That monster had split the incoming tank shells in two!!!
Bang!
This time it was not the tank firing.
It was the monster.
And then the soldiers saw the steel beast they called a tank melt as if it had been made of cheap foam. It was like being struck by thermite. In an instant, a third of it had burned away into glowing ruin.
Bang, bang...
A few more shots followed, and at once another armored vehicle and another tank fell silent.
At that moment, the soldiers' expressions finally began to collapse into something unmistakable.
Despair.
There was no way to win against a monster like this.
Fighting back was nothing but suicide.
So they might as well imitate the comrade who had already broken down, dropped his weapon, and stopped resisting.
Then they heard it.
The sound of helicopter rotors.
They looked toward the source and saw one of their own armed helicopters.
In the next instant, rockets ignited and tore through the night sky, four of them racing into the supersonic realm at once.
Boom boom boom boom!
W-What happened?
No one understood.
The rockets had not even passed over their heads before they exploded in midair.
But something about the explosions was wrong. It was almost as if they had partially failed to detonate. The explosives had not fully gone off, yet the intense heat had directly melted the metal casings into flowing iron.
Some of the soldiers' pupils widened.
A few of them understood the truth.
They had seen the movement of the humanoid killing machine.
Its gun was angled upward, and just now it had pulled the trigger in rapid succession.
It had shot the rockets out of the air.
Y-You've got to be kidding me.
Bang!
The helicopter turned into a fireball and crashed.
Their hope had become despair all over again.
Just surrender.
Just stop resisting.
But then, at that very moment, giant mechanical figures the size of three-story buildings suddenly burst out from the structures on both sides.
At nearly the same instant, the roar of autocannon fire erupted.
Arm Slaves.
The kings of land warfare in this era.
The enormous guns in their hands fired rounds so large that on any other vehicle they would have counted as cannon caliber.
They opened fire in a frenzy.
In an instant, the area where the enemy stood was blasted apart under a rain of shells. The asphalt itself was pulverized.
When the firing finally stopped, the dust settled, and what was revealed was utter devastation.
The entire stretch of ground had been shredded and sunk by roughly a meter.
But there was no sign of the enemy.
Had it been blown to pieces?
But if that were true, would it have vanished so completely without leaving even fragments?
"U-up there!"
A trembling soldier pointed at the sky.
What?
They looked up.
At that exact moment, they saw a figure descending from above, completely unharmed.
In the next second, it disappeared.
More accurately, it moved too fast for the eye to follow. Their dynamic vision could not keep up. By the time the soldiers noticed the new development, they realized that the weapon in the right-side AS's hands had already been cut cleanly in half.
Then the metal devil moved again with terrifying speed, almost leaving an afterimage.
The instant it came to a stop, the AS collapsed like a pile of building blocks.
Before it could even explode, the metal devil vanished again.
Boom!!!
An explosion followed.
Less than two seconds later, another explosion sounded, and the soldiers turned with deadened expressions toward the second AS.
It too had been chopped to pieces and blown apart.
At that moment, every last shred of their will to fight was destroyed.
The strongest king of land warfare mankind possessed had just been torn apart as easily as a giant toy made of plastic.
And in that instant, they all understood.
If this metal devil truly wanted to slaughter them, it would be effortless.
The sluggish, plodding way it had walked earlier...
That had not been because it was slow.
It had just been playing with them.
(End of Chapter)
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