Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 4===

And so.

“Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.”

“Hey, we’re stuck doing this now, so how about we focus on that? Okay!?”

Quenser gave a smile faker than an infomercial host while a heavy atmosphere drove everyone crazy in the back of an armored truck.

Tanks, armored vehicles, and armored trucks were all driving in the same direction. All the spare potatoes had been gathered. Their goal was to find the stockyard that Ivory Garden used to temporarily store their ill-gotten goods, covertly attack it, and do something about the Object reactor being sent through that secret transportation route.

However.

All they found was the occasional conifer forest in a vast, wild plain that looked like god had gotten lazy when designing it. The only artificial thing in sight was the asphalt road that continued all the way to the horizon and beyond. There were no telephone poles or guardrails. Nor were there any obvious guard towers or thick concrete walls.

Quenser held an analog pair of binoculars that provided no electronic assistance.

“When you get down to it, there’s a bunch of land here and no one has found any value in it. It’s hard to maintain so much land, so that ends up being a job for satellites and drones.”

“Ivory Garden has to have done more than just find a way to slip past those mechanical searches. There’s nowhere to hide! Or did they dig some long-ass tunnel underground!?”

“They aren’t hiding from humans, so they didn’t need to do that.”

“So, what? Did they hack the devices or something? That’s crazy when we’re talking about a military datalink!!”

“Don’t overcomplicate it. Glasses and masks for people who dislike facial recognition are fairly common nowadays. They’re using camouflage. If they hide their entire base with electronic camouflage specialized for mechanical eyes, the overhead searches won’t find the people and trucks running and driving around right in the open.”

“Why do you know so much about this?”

“If I just sat around, I was pretty sure all of you were going to surround me and shove your feet up my ass, so I worked my ass off studying. Like my life counted on it! I checked through the last few years’ worth of newspaper articles and non-fiction books!! Three cheers for the modern age of everything getting a digital release!!”

Deceptive patterns meant to blend into the scenery had been used by insects and such long before humans invented military camouflage. But because the animals’ predators saw colors differently, they did not always seem very well hidden when viewed through human eyes.

It was the same with cameras and sensors.

Camouflage patterns differed greatly depending on who or what you were trying to deceive. When trying to avoid detection by satellites or drones, you had to take infrared, ultrasound, and microwaves into consideration.

But on the other hand, no matter how conspicuous it might appear to human eyes, mechanical security would completely overlook it if the right conditions were met. The designers had started using terms like “AI” and “machine learning” to improve their image, but the programs were still just programs. They could not do what they could not do. No matter how minor the trouble, the entire system would freeze.

“They’ll be worried about eyes in the sky, so we should be able to see something different if we view things from the ground like this.”

“I get that, but where exactly are we supposed to search?”

“The enemy will be using patrol drones too. I doubt they’re dumb enough to directly send control signals out from their secret base, but it looks like they have a few launch areas set up a short distance away. Let’s mark a few of those points on the map and use them to draw a big circle. I bet we’ll find them at the center point. In other words, around here.”

“Hold on. Hand me those binoculars. Look to 5 o’clock. There’s a thin trail of smoke.”

“Are they having a barbecue for dinner? They must be enjoying their outdoor lifestyle.”

“That’s not funny when we’re talking about poachers. I hope they aren’t eating mermaid meat or something.”

In the distance, they could see the remains of a forest burned to the ground, but it was unclear what the story was there.

The poachers had already clashed with the 35th over the panda(?) baby, so they might be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary close enough to notice something with binoculars. So even after detecting the oddity, Quenser and the others kept driving slowly along the road instead of slamming on the brakes.

“Let’s jump out.”

“This scares me more than some flashy firefight.”

While preparing for the worst, Quenser, Heivia, and the others secretly hopped out of their truck while any attention would be on the military caravan. They could only bring around 20 people with them.

“Ivory Garden must have drones in the air. Staying low is useless if they can see us from above. What do we do?”

“Let’s not copy the poachers. We’re a proper military force, so let’s do this the fun way.”

Just then, something like a thick wall approached them, swallowed them up, and blinded them all at once. It was not quite the same as a thick fog.

The wind had already been blowing in this direction, so…

“Bweh!? Cough, cough. What’s this, a sandstorm!?”

“This is part of our standard patrol and training process, remember? The Princess is running the Baby Magnum’s static electricity propulsion device from more than 20km away. We claim it’s maintenance and stress testing for the undercarriage to make it seem unrelated. Now, let’s use this nuisance of a sandstorm to sneak in.”

This was clearly abnormal, but Ivory Garden needed to hide. No matter how much of a stench and a racket their neighbors were causing, they could not file a formal complaint.

With the sunlight blocked, the area grew as dark as during an eclipse. Quenser’s group put on dust masks and goggles so they could move freely and then they continued the investigation.

“I hope we can do something about their electronic camouflage. If it fools mechanical eyes, it might affect Objects too.”

“Is it really that effective? No one knows what color to paint their Objects because there’s no way to hide something so big, right?”

“But if it does mess with the Baby Magnum’s aim, we’ll be the one’s blown away on accident.”

“…”

“See what I mean? Let’s make sure to destroy it all just to be safe.”

Fortunately, they found the base itself pretty quickly.

After spotting the giant silhouette and hiding in a conifer forest, they contacted the Princess and had her lower the density of the sandstorm. They could see again and the sunlight grew a little brighter. Now it was more like evening than an eclipse.

And when they peered through their binoculars…

“Found it.”

“What is that? An airplane graveyard?”

“Well, it ain’t a strip club, I can tell you that.”

A few large passenger planes were sitting around in various states of damage or disrepair: the head portion cut away, one of the main wings missing, etc. A puddle continued in a straight line for kilometers, so that may have been the remains of the unpaved runway where the planes had made their final landing. There were also small air cargo containers lying around. Those 2m aluminum dice likely functioned as tents. People stayed in the planes and animals stayed in the containers.

“Continental Line, Citizen Jet, and Sky Hotel. They’re all from different airlines. Although it feels more like an illegal dismantling yard than a shared recycling plant.”

“Hey, you aren’t marking this on the map are you? Once the sandstorm gets thick again, you won’t even be able to see the map in your hand!”

Overall, it appeared to be about the size of a school campus. It was impressive they had managed to escape satellite and drone detection for so long.

“What are those covering them from above? Tents???”

“Those would be the satellite countermeasure. I can’t see it from here, but I bet they’re covered with a striped barcode-like pattern.”

A tent of a thick, artificial material that rivaled a circus tent in size was covering each of the passenger planes. The containers and other surface facilities were covered by long, narrow tents forming roofed walkways between the big tents.

Some canopied trucks and patrolling infantry were keeping guard.

The soldiers were armed with cheap submachineguns, but their stability was forcibly increased using large wooden stocks and grips as weights. Those accessories seemed to eliminate the light weight that was the entire point behind a submachinegun. The weapons appeared to be camouflaged with a special kind of tape instead of spray paint. They looked difficult to disassemble and maintain.

Their uniforms used an unfamiliar pattern. It was a lot like the static on an old TV. Had they painted it themselves? Heivia tried viewing it through his electronically-enhanced assault rifle and clicked his tongue. It must have been screwing with all of the assistance features.

“That’s it all right.”

“But what do we do about it? The Princess’s glasses might be the wrong prescription too. The cleanup would be a pain if she did shoot them, but it would be best if she could threaten them in a nice, safe holdup. So do we just have to send her the coordinates???”

“I’d be afraid we’re working from two different sets of coordinates or something. The only real option is to get closer and do something about those tents. That sounds like your specialty, Heivia. Can I pass this off to you?”

“I had a feeling you were going to dump the whole mess in my lap before long. Although I’m praying this doesn’t end up being your specialty. Let’s get going.”

Quenser watched as Heivia and the others attached suppressors to the front of their guns.

“These are cheap, so they’ll start letting the sound through before long. We can’t just go in guns blazing.”

“That’s better than chucking a bomb into their base and starting a commotion right away. Take care of this.”

They contacted the Princess and had her intensify the artificial sandstorm again. Quenser and Heivia used that as their chance to approach the temporary stockyard of the international poaching group called Ivory Garden.

Both sides could only see 5m away at best and sounds were hard to make out through the endless noise much like scratching sandpaper.

Once they reached the stockyard’s perimeter, Quenser and Heivia crouched down. This wasteland had no trees or even bushes to hide behind, but the guard walking by nearby did not seem to notice them. Heivia considered killing the guard, but he decided to let the soldier go.

“(So how far into the base do I need to get you?)”

“(To the tents. There are a few points where the thick wires are anchored in the ground, right? I’ll set a bomb on each of those and then blow them all up at once.)”

The wires were thicker than Quenser’s thumb and they were anchored with a J-shaped peg thicker than his arm which was embedded in concrete. The tents meant to hide a 70m passenger plane had 8 such wires. With that kind of tension, even slight damage would cause them to snap all on their own.

Inside the raging sandstorm, Quenser gently patted a peg he had finished attaching the bomb to.

“A Spider? Is it called that because of the camouflage or because it’s like a spider web?”

“Hm? Why’s there a product name on it? You mean these aren’t handmade by the poachers?”

A sound like an electric razor hummed by overhead.

“God, that’s scary. Is it one of their drones?”

Heivia ducked down, but if it had noticed them, a siren would have sounded and they would have been surrounded. After waiting for the hunk of plastic and rare earths to fly off into the artificial sandstorm, the potatoes made their way to the next peg. The size was incredible, but the shape was not all that different from the tents used to keep the sun off at a cookout.

Quenser’s group was trying to locate and retrieve the reactor, but they wanted full support from the Baby Magnum before they attempted that.

“There are three planes: Sky Hotel, Citizen Jet, and Continental Line. Each tent has 8 wires, so…”

“Are you kidding me? That’s more than 20 in all.”

They heard the fierce barking of a dog. It seemed to be one of the military dogs raised in the air cargo containers that looked like aluminum dice. Heivia quickly aimed his suppressor-equipped handgun that way, but Quenser stopped him with a hand. Corpses would leave evidence of an abnormality, even if it was an animal’s.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

They waited for a bit and the dog kept barking inside the fenced-off container, but none of the guards came over to check.

“They probably think it’s just worked up over the sandstorm.”

“These are people who can ignore the screams of the animals they kill. Yet it might have saved their lives here if they had any love for their dog at all. You could say they brought it on themselves.”

Of course, if they had not become poachers in the first place, they would not have a national military bearing down on them.

After that, they finished going around attaching clay-like bombs to the Citizen Jet and Sky Hotel pegs that were on the perimeter of the facility. For the rest, they needed to move deeper into the stockyard.

“Hey, this is scary. Do we really need to attach bombs to every last one? As long as we get rid of the tents, can’t the Princess handle the rest?”

“What if that partial detonation doesn’t work? Then we’ll have to head back to get rid of the tent properly. Do you want to go grab the hornet’s nest you knocked to the ground? Besides, we haven’t gotten any of the Continental Line pegs.”

Despite their argument, the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes were relaxing. The pleasure of success could be a tempting demon. The fear of death was fading now that they had proven they could approach the enemy without notice. The human ability to grow accustomed to most anything had a way of creating openings.

Drip.

A wet sensation hit Quenser’s cheek. In the time it took him to wipe off the drop, many more began to pour down.

“Rain?”

The back of his hand was stained. The rain had absorbed all of the dust the Princess was sending into the air.

Which meant…

“Oh, no! It’s bringing down our curtain!!”

Buckets of rain poured down. The tents covering the three large passenger planes and dice-like metal containers were gigantic, but they were tiny compared to the immensity of nature. The Princess was producing the dust from 20km away, so the sandstorm was knocked down by the rain before it ever arrived.

The thick curtain blocking the enemy’s view was visibly thinning. An unfamiliar silhouette wavered quite near Heivia. And that silhouette held a customized firearm created by attaching a large wood stock and other weights to a submachinegun to forcibly increase its stability.

“!?”

Heivia immediately fired two quiet shots with his suppressor-equipped handgun, but he was still nervous, so he pulled out a knife and stabbed the guard with it.

However, that was all he could manage.

There was no safety here.

Quenser somehow managed to tug on his awful friend’s arm and dove behind a nearby plastic trashcan.

It was clearing up.

Their vision was becoming hopelessly clear.

First, one of the drones that sounded like an electric razor spotted the corpse with its cameras and then a shrill alarm sounded from the radios attached to all the guards’ shoulders.

“This is a disaster!!”

The difference in numbers was approximately 20-to-300.

They could never win in a normal fight, but they had still had the tanks and armored vehicles they had let drive right by as a diversion. Not to mention the Object.

“We need to buy some time, Quenser. 10 minutes! That might not sound like much, but a submachinegun can fire 6000 shots in that time on full-auto. If we don’t work our asses off to survive, we’ll be headed home in body bags!!”

“Wait, Heivia! There’s a smarter way to do this! Come with me if you don’t want an emotional death scene!!”

“I’m sick of your riddles! Just tell me what your plan is!!”

Quenser started by using his radio to detonate all of the plastic explosives he had attached to the pegs. With a loud boom and a shockwave, Ivory Garden was thrown into chaos and a canopied truck near one snapped wire was torn in two.

One of the tents acting as a roof collapsed and covered up the passenger plane bearing the Sky Hotel logo.

Once he knew the enemy’s view was blocked, Quenser raised his voice.

“The drones take priority! Don’t let them see us from above! We can hide from the soldiers on the ground a lot more easily!!”

Heivia leaned out from behind cover and fired a quick spray of assault rifle bullets to bring down a drone flying by like a toy.

“That took down the tents, right? So mission accomplished!”

“It’s not enough! We have to go a bit further!!”

They heard thundering footsteps. No matter how careful you were, there was nothing you could do about mud and puddles. Heivia pulled the clear plastic sheet off a nearby container, threw it over his and Quenser’s head, and got down on the wet ground.

Four or five guards arrived after presumably seeing the final image from that drone. If they fired their submachineguns at this close range, not even a pocket watch with your beloved’s photo in your breast pocket could save your life.

Quenser’s eyes bugged out, but Heivia covered the student’s mouth.

A military boot stepped right next to their faces.

Staying still required immense patience.

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Once the guards had passed by and were showing their backs, Heivia quickly dispatched them all with a spray of rifle bullets.

Heivia glanced at the suppressor at the end of the barrel.

“Green and brown aren’t the only kinds of camouflage. When it’s pouring rain like this, people will assume a patch of something shiny on the ground is just a puddle.”

Translucent jellyfish were not necessarily invisible to other creatures. When the sun was shining into the sea, they would reflect that light to hide themselves.

Stealing some enemy uniforms would be one way to hide, but the uniforms would be less than convincing when full of holes and stained with blood.

And then Quenser noticed something.

He may have had the pouring rain to thank.

He clearly saw a thin red line of light slowly sliding along in front of his nose.

“A sniper!?”

Heivia grabbed shouting Quenser’s arm and dove into the area full of dice-like containers. There was a lot of cover, but dogs started barking wildly from the surrounding containers.

“This isn’t much of a hiding spot!!”

“Heivia, check the untouched Continental Line. The sniper is on the plane’s roof. Can you shoot the tire below it? Planes are generally supported at three points, so take out one of those and the plane will fall over!!”

Heivia fired a few shots with his assault rifle, realized that was not going to cut it, and rested a missile launcher on his shoulder. With a loud sound and a line of smoke, the explosive flew out and destroyed the metal leg instead of just the giant 12-in-1 tire. The Continental Line plane wobbled to the side and then toppled over, breaking its right main wing under its own weight. It must have only been made of an aluminum alloy. The sniper on the roof must have lost their balance and fallen.

By the way, it seemed the plane was still usable on the inside.

Quenser’s eyes widened when he saw the liquid joining the rainwater after leaking out from the cracks in the right main wing. And the leftover flames from the missile were still emitting some light here and there.

“Get down!!”

His warning was meaningless.

The jet fuel ignited and caused a large explosion. The sniper must have been fried nice and crispy where they had fallen to the ground. But they had everyone inside the plane for company.

“This game of hide-and-seek isn’t all bad. If not for the sudden rain, we couldn’t have seen the sniper laser from the side.”

But the shockwave had unlatched a few of the nearby containers.

The trained Dobermans had been released.

“It’s always something, isn’t it!?”

They could not hope to defeat the dogs in a test of strength or speed, so they instead used the dogs’ instincts against them. Heivia held his assault rifle out horizontally, let the military dog bite it like a toy bone, and then swung a large knife down at the thing’s head.

“Ugh, now this is heartbreaking. I’m gonna be having nightmares about this.”

“After all the humans you’ve killed?”

More importantly, they could not stay in one place. They were still outnumbered after all. They had to make sure they were not caught in the smoke, but the thick black smoke from the burning jet fuel was a decent replacement for the sandstorm. Fuel fires could not be put out by the rain so easily.

“When are our reinforcements getting here? The soldiers in the Citizen Jet and Sky Hotel are going to crawl out from under the tents before long!”

“Wah!!”

Driven by fear, Quenser grabbed a nearby burning stick and chucked it toward the Sky Hotel passenger plane. That was the only way he could think of to keep back the guard he saw lifting up the thick sheet to approach him and the others.

“Ah?”

But it burst into flames.

His aim was bad and the torch did not even come close to hitting the guard, but it did land on the edge of the electronic camouflage tent covering the passenger plane and that petroleum product began burning and visibly losing its shape like a melting slice of cheese.

So what was happening here?

The passenger plane was transformed into an oven with around 100 people trapped inside the turkey’s belly.

“Wah. Wah! Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

“Damn. Why don’t any of the war treaties ban ''this''?”

There was no stopping the conflagration now that it had started. Quenser quaked at the nightmarish image before his eyes, but Heivia grabbed his arm and got him to hide behind the curtain of dark smoke.

Heivia sensed a presence and aimed his assault rifle over, but it was someone else in a Legitimacy Kingdom uniform who emerged from the smoke.

“Oh, it’s Myonri. Then where’d the enemy go!?”

“M-maybe we got them all?” suggested the girl.

There was little chance of that.

It was unclear how effective the smoke was, but then a bright fog light shined in from the side.

“Watch out!!”

They quickly rolled out of the way just in time for a canopied truck to burst through the black curtain.

And it was not alone.

More heavy truck tires passed by right next to Heivia’s lowered head. Like the blade of a guillotine.

The potatoes just barely managed to avoid death, but the enemy was not focused on them. Instead of making a U-turn, they continued outside the camp.

“They ran away.”

“What happened to the Object reactor? Did they take it away? If we don’t know, this was all for nothing!!”

Several powerful booms followed. Legitimacy Kingdom tank shells pierced the belly of the Citizen Jet passenger plane and it burst from within as it too burned.

Now all three planes were in flames.

The battle was over.

“The reinforcements sure took their sweet time!”

Quenser and Heivia hopped onto an 8-wheeled armored vehicle that drove up, climbed up the side bumper that was like a birdcage meant to scatter a light rocket blast, and crawled onto the flat roof. A young woman had her upper body sticking out of the hatch and her boobs jiggled as she fired the heavy machinegun to mop up the remaining Ivory Garden poachers. Heivia lightly slapped the back of her head. But instead of being an abusive Island Nation husband who was always overturning the tea table, he was just trying to get her attention over the deafening gunfire.

He shouted into her ear once she noticed him and stopped firing.

“Enough of that! Leave it to the tanks! Get the faster vehicles to the south and chase after the fleeing trucks!!”

“Myonri, work with the others to mop up the enemy base. Finish off the remaining poachers and don’t forget to gather the animals from the containers for protection!”

With the roar of a diesel engine, the 8-wheeled armored vehicle accelerated once more.

To be blunt, tanks and armored vehicles were not designed with acceleration in mind. They could reach speeds upwards of 100km/h, but they would fry their engines if they maintained those speeds for long. Their one advantage was that the Ivory Garden trucks were driving along the open wasteland instead of asphalt. The 8-wheels and continuous tracks were there for that purpose.

After passing through the charred remains of a forest that had burned down for some reason or another, the enemy armored trucks made their way toward the empty wasteland. Even with 4-wheel drive, they lacked the horsepower to drive right over the thick tree trunks.

“Oh, looks like the tanks are coming with us.”

“Because some stupid officer posted on social media that tanks weren’t needed when you can stick a turret on top of an armored truck. That’s a sore spot for the tanks since they’ve always had to fight against crazy ideas like multiple turrets or an open top where the entire roof comes off. And actual results in battle are the best way to shake off those old nightmares.”

Four hundred meters ahead, around five canopied trucks were struggling with the hilly terrain after the rain loosened up the ground. They must have been in a rush because plastic bottles and snack wrappers were falling from the back of the trucks. That distance was a bit much for forcibly stabilized submachineguns fired from a shaking truck, but it was nothing for the Legitimacy Kingdom heavy machineguns which were designed for a range of 2000 meters.

“Blow them away already, baby.”

“This won’t blow up a reactor, will it?”

While they discussed that, a thick tank following along behind them was suddenly blasted up from directly below.

“Hey, what just happened!?”

“It didn’t look like something flew in and hit it.”

Meanwhile, an armored vehicle alongside theirs was flipped over by an explosion. It nearly rolled into them, but their 8-wheeled vehicle took quick evasive action. Quenser grabbed onto the hips of the curvy young woman whose upper body was sticking out from the hatch. Heivia reached out to do the same, but he got a heel to the chin.

They had not heard anything being fired or flying through the air.

Nor did it seem to be an invisible laser beam or microwave attack.

Quenser finally figured out what was going on.

He pressed the top of his head against the busty young woman’s navel instead of her softer bits and shouted down through the gap between her stomach and the hatch’s edge.

“Don’t just follow after them! Spread out to the sides!!”

“Dammit, Quenser! Quit taking the center spot and hogging her to yourself!!”

“The thought of sharing with you creeps me out. Anyway, those trucks are dropping garbage while making it look like they’re having trouble, right? There are plate-shaped anti-tank mines mixed in!! That previous truck blew up as soon as it drove on top of an empty pizza box!!”

To the very end, these people were all about disguise and camouflage. After sharing that information via radio, the Legitimacy Kingdom tanks and armored vehicles split into two formations on either side to approach the canopied trucks while avoiding the booby traps stuffed in lunchboxes or sandwiched between tied stacks of pinup magazines.

Quenser held the young woman tight as he looked up at her past her ample bust.

“Get back at them for what they did! Fire!!”

“No, don’t fire, you idiot! Ahh! We have them surrounded, but the bullets are flying past the target and hitting our allies on the other side! If you’ve tamed her, then make sure you don’t screw up your instructions for her!!”

“Oh, shut up! Those are tanks on the other side, right? This machinegun can’t punch through their thick armor, so it’s okay.”

But this was no time to breathe a sigh of relief at that news.

A shrill alarm sounded from the equipment inside the vehicle and passed through the young woman’s body to reach them outside the hatch.

Heivia’s eyes widened.

“An IR lock!?”

“Eh? The poachers have another weapon?”

“Don’t be dumb! It’s from our tanks!!”

With a low roar that shook in their gut, an armor-piercing shell flew their way. Maybe because of the intense rain, it veered off course a bit and hit the ground nearby, but the shockwave was enough for the armored vehicle to lift up on half its wheels.

“They’re firing a tank gun when this thing’s only got thin armor!? Are those idiots seriously trying to get us killed!?”

“Okay, just take them out before they take us out! Hey, machinegun girl, use the direct-view visor! Take careful aim and you can damage the tank!!”

No one was even paying any attention to the canopied trucks as they were filled with holes and blown away. The low-IQ potatoes were too busy firing on each other. Since each tank shell cost more than 10,000 euros, they might as well have been slapping each other with stacks of cash. And it was all paid for with the people’s taxes. It was truly an unforgivable battle.

“Fire, fire! Keep firing until they stop!!”

“Toyser can go to hell! I lent him 200 euros and here he is shooting at us! Let’s just kill the bastard!!”

“Did you forget you ‘lent him’ that to partially pay back the 1000 euros he lent you?”

“There’s no way I can pay back the rest, so let’s just kill him!!”

Then they were hit by divine punishment.

The Baby Magnum finally arrived and fired a shot straight into the center of the world’s most pointless infighting.

The armored vehicle finally rolled over and the people on the roof were nearly crushed by the 8-wheeled body. The young woman at the heavy machinegun was in the most danger. If she hadn’t kicked Quenser off of her and ducked down into the round manhole-like hatch, she would have found herself on the receiving end of a game of human whack-a-mole.

“Take this seriously, everyone” warned the Princess.

“You just caused more damage than anyone, dammit!”

At any rate, not one of Ivory Garden’s canopied trucks remained intact after taking machinegun fire and shells from both sides and then having an Object railgun shell crash right down on top of them. It looked like the only option was to gather up the parts scattered over a very wide area.

However…

“So what happened to the JPlevelMHD reactor?”

“…”

They checked over the radio and discovered that Myonri and the others had not found anything while searching the poachers’ burning hideout and stockyard.

Quenser clicked his tongue.

“Damn, does that mean they’d already sent it away!?”