Five figures in combat suits were sprinting through the streets.
From their movements, they clearly were not pursuing anyone. They were fleeing in terror from something behind them.
The person in front crossed an intersection.
Crack!
A muted gunshot reached the people behind him.
Before the sound even reached their ears, more than seventy percent of the lead figure's body had already exploded into fragments, none larger than a fist.
It looked as though he had been struck by an artillery shell.
That meant the projectile had hit him before the sound of the shot reached the others.
According to their powered armor's calculations, the bullet had been traveling at more than Mach 3.
The survivors skidded to a halt, but none of them had the presence of mind to focus on the data produced by their armor.
They only knew that they had to escape immediately.
That monster was systematically eliminating them.
They had finally confirmed what the monster looked like.
The destruction of their mothership and the other vessels in orbit must have been his work, or the work of whatever force stood behind him.
Now he was hunting them across the planet's surface.
Not long ago, they had been hunting the remaining humans for their own amusement.
They had never imagined that they would so quickly become prey to an even more powerful hunter.
Crack! Crack!
It sounded like only two gunshots.
Yet the last survivor saw four of his companions explode into pieces.
Sensing something, he threw himself sideways.
A bullet struck the spot where he had been standing less than two feet away, exploding with such force that it pulverized the arm he had not managed to pull clear.
He also felt tiny, sand-like particles punch partially through his powered armor and burrow into his body.
At that moment, the soldier understood that he was going to die.
Escaping had been almost impossible even before he was wounded. In his current condition, there was no hope at all.
His eyes gleamed viciously beneath his helmet as he pulled out a device containing a highly powerful explosive.
His intentions were obvious.
If he could not escape, he would take the monster with him.
Then an unexpected streak of cold light sliced through the air.
It cut through metal, skin, muscle, and bone.
The hand holding the explosive fell away intact.
Crack!
A ghostlike figure appeared directly in front of the soldier.
A projectile erupted from the newcomer's weapon, pierced the soldier's skull, and continued onward to strike the firearm held by another enemy thirty feet away.
A fierce light burst from the weapon's barrel. Arcs of electricity erupted and engulfed its owner.
[My Sister Is the Cutest: His timing was absolutely perfect. He accounted for the moment the enemy aimed at him, the time needed to pull the trigger, the laser rifle's firing delay, and his own bullet's travel time. If we also include the head he blew apart as an obstacle, then the formula would be...]
What followed was an enormous string of symbols and text related to mathematics and physics.
It looked extraordinarily complex, well beyond anything a high school student could understand. Even an ordinary college student probably would not have known what was being calculated.
[My Sister Is the Cutest: Hmm, I've finished the calculations. This person's physical reaction time is approximately two to three milliseconds. As for his actual thought-processing speed, that must be at least within the microsecond range.]
Another message appeared, almost as though the commenter were talking to herself.
The girl watching the broadcast knew enough to understand how absurd those figures were.
If someone like this existed in her world, he would unquestionably be a monster. No number of ordinary soldiers could overwhelm him.
The only plausible way to kill him would be saturating the entire area with heavy firepower.
The person constantly rambling in the livestream chat seemed to be in the same situation as her. Her consciousness had also been connected to this strange Interdimensional Channel.
Of course, the other person could have been lying.
The girl had remained silent ever since she was connected.
Part of the reason was that she simply had not known how to post a message.
That had only been true at first. Eventually, the user named My Sister Is the Cutest taught her how the system worked.
It was simple.
Far simpler than she had ever imagined.
Anyone who had used a smartphone or messaging app could have understood it immediately.
The girl, however, had never used a smartphone.
It was not that she did not know what one was. She simply regarded phones as tools for making calls and only touched hers when she needed to contact someone urgently.
As a result, she had never needed to replace it frequently. She still used the old phone she had received when she was five years old.
[My Sister Is the Cutest: Judging by the calculations I just performed, this planet's gravity is approximately 1.352 times Earth's. The atmospheric density may be...]
This person was clearly some kind of mad scientist.
[My Sister Is the Cutest: Hmm. In terms of purely physical protection, that powered armor is clearly stronger than the first-generation IS units I created...]
The livestream chat was packed with her lengthy "research papers," which kept appearing without end.
The strange woman had obviously begun treating the livestream's comment section like a blackboard.
A sudden chorus of agonized screams drew the girl's attention back to the broadcast.
Another series of gruesome scenes unfolded.
The person broadcasting the footage had suddenly stormed into a stronghold and begun slaughtering everyone indiscriminately.
It would have been one thing if his targets had all been armed soldiers, but most of the people there appeared to be civilians.
Crack!
The girl's heart lurched in horror.
The broadcaster had mercilessly crushed a toddler's head in his hand.
He looked like a complete psychopath.
Even if he was on another planet or this was merely some kind of immersive movie, the scene was still deeply disturbing.
The girl did not consider herself a good person either. Her entire family was arguably the greatest cancer in their country.
Their conglomerate controlled nearly three-quarters of the nation's economic lifelines, while the other three great families divided most of what remained.
Even someone like her felt nothing but disgust and contempt for what she was watching.
If someone wanted to pick a fight, they should at least choose an opponent capable of fighting back.
But where was this place?
The user named My Sister Is the Cutest had already analyzed the situation and concluded that the broadcast was real.
According to her, it was a genuine livestream taking place on an alien planet.
The planet was likely located outside the solar system of some parallel universe.
She had reached that conclusion based on the word "interdimensional" in the channel's name.
If that were true, then My Sister Is the Cutest did not come from the girl's world either.
She had already discussed certain events and technologies from her own world, none of which existed in the girl's.
There were undoubtedly more members of the Interdimensional Channel than just the two of them.
Correction, there were at least three if the broadcaster was included.
There were probably other members who had yet to come online.
Hmm?
It appeared that the broadcaster's livestream was about to end.
He had been lured into the enemy's main base and was now surrounded by more than a thousand armed opponents.
Faced with such desperate odds, he suddenly looked up at the sky.
The sky?
The thousand soldiers surrounding him also began to panic. They aimed their anti-aircraft weapons, which fired lasers, into the sky and opened fire.
More than a dozen fireballs were hurtling down through the atmosphere.
They made slight course corrections to avoid the lasers fired from below.
Even when a beam struck one, it seemed to inflict almost no damage.
Boom!
More than a dozen fireballs slammed into the enemy formation, inflicting heavy casualties.
As the dust cleared, the objects were revealed to be drop pods.
Figures nearly eight feet tall emerged from them, each one resembling a walking iron tank.
They were unquestionably humans wearing massive armor. Several had not put on their helmets, exposing visibly human heads.
Even without that somewhat archaic-looking heavy armor, each of them was probably more than six and a half feet tall.
The instant they entered the battlefield, clouds of blood erupted in every direction.
It was a completely one-sided massacre.
One minute later, all one thousand armed combatants had been slaughtered.
One thing was obvious.
This cold-blooded force had been summoned by the person broadcasting the livestream.
(End of Chapter)
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