Editing City Series:Volume6b Chapter6 (section)

===Part 9===

“––––!”

Berger opened his mouth, but the destruction arrived before he could get his voice out.

The soldiers running over to him on the road shook for a brief moment.

Then they blurred, like a sudden pan during a film.

Finally, three of them became a dark spray.

But that was not all. A white mist raced across the road Berger was using.

That mist was created in the heated air when the shockwave of something’s rapid passage made the moisture in the air gather together.

The shockwave was coming.

“!”

The wind exploded and a gunshot-like roar arrived a moment later.

It did not end there.

Berger saw a gun readied at a distance of a mile. Sparks repeatedly erupted from the anti-fortress autocannon’s muzzle.

It fired at a rate of 15 shots per second. The Grösse Panzer autocannon was based on the MG 34 and it used armor-piercing rounds to break through even a fortress’s armor. It was an unstoppable weapon in anti-Grösse Panzer combat.

Assuming you had free control of a Grösse Panzer that could ignore its formidable recoil, that is.

But the blue Grösse Panzer was doing just that. A clear tone reminiscent of a wind instrument ran from the far distance and the empty cartridges rang beautifully against the pavement below.

Cartridges the size of drink cans dully reflected the base’s crimson lights as they scattered.

Each one of those represented a fired bullet.

The wreckage of the two armored trucks at the front gate took direct hits.

Both of them were blasted straight up, like a kicked soccer ball.

They took further bullets in midair, blowing them away and rupturing them. Their scattering parts were further smashed, bent, and obliterated by the shockwave.

The people who were sent airborne along with the trucks met the same fate.

They were made of flesh and bone, not metal, so they were reduced to a fine spray instead of being bent.

A few managed to escape and quickly prepared to fight back. Some only managed to scream, but no one could do anything for them.

Luckily, their one spell user threw out her submachinegun and readied her rapid-fire device for the cards she kept at her wrist. She set up a defense field and shouted something with her long hair whipping in the wind.

The wind was blown away as the field opened in the shape of a hemispherical virtual ram directed toward the enemy threat.

A few of the survivors were under her protection.

It was meaningless.

She and the four others were popped like balloons.

The steel bullet instantly penetrated the defense field, tore up the road, and ricocheted. It whipped up the wind as it flew off into the night sky.

The roar of rapid fire tore ceaselessly through the heated air.

The noise and shockwaves kept coming.

An embodiment of destruction tore holes in the road while rushing toward the runway.

“––––!?”

Berger watched it all from behind a tree nearly felled by the shockwaves.

One of the Jagdhunds on the runway had its right shoulder blown away.

It had the thickest shoulder armor of any Mittel Panzer in current use, but that was torn away and shattered just in time for the next bullet to rip the entire arm off.

Next was the chest. Deep holes formed in its glossy black chest and stomach armor.

A moment later, an explosion erupted from its other side, like spraying blood.

The impact sent inside the armor shell passed all the way through and destroyed its back.

Everything in between was cracked open and blasted out from its back. There was a gaping hole in it now, but since it had all left through the back, it almost looked like its torso had been sucked in toward the center of its stomach.

Then the face was blown away.

The other Jagdhund had no idea what was happening but still took evasive action.

Its head and shoulders were one single piece, so its movements were sluggish and required the use of its entire body.

It tried to turn left to move behind the destroyed hangar for cover.

That was a mistake.

Just as it started to turn, a bullet blew a hole in the shoulder moving out front.

The armor-piercing round pierced the part of the shoulder armor that stuck up, pierced through the side of the head, and then stopped at the opposite shoulder.

The impact was powerful enough to lift the Jagdhund from the ground like it had been hit with an uppercut.

But the destructive impacts were not done with it yet. More unseen power tore into the airborne Mittel Panzer.

Almost like it was being chewed apart by a swarm of invisible jaws.

Terrible sounds crashed together in midair, creating a discordant chorus. The Jagdhund was literally tossed side to side in what looked like a midair dance.

The bullet impacts filled it with inertia, sending it back toward the runway. On the way, it was gradually dismembered. First, its fingers and ankles disappeared and then its right leg and both arms were obliterated.

Once the wreckage was too small for the bullets to hit properly, it rolled along the ground a few times.

The gunfire stopped once both Jagdhunds had entirely disappeared.

The wind washed over the aftermath before soaring up into the sky.

“You’re a real piece of work,” grumbled Berger, his eyes on Neue Blau.

Neue Blau lifted the gun from Neue Zinnober’s shoulder and moved it back and forth.

The barrel fell away while smoking from the great heat filling it.

Neue Blau calmly pulled a new barrel from its back and attached it.

It was not out of ammunition.

The battle was not over.

“…”

Berger looked to the road in front of him.

It was covered in rubble, sand, and scraps of metal too badly damaged to identify.

No evidence remained that any life had been there.

Berger clenched his teeth.

Neue Blau and Neue Zinnobar walked forward. They left the truck behind.

The base was now a battlefield, not the scene of a fire.