Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 5===

Without the oppressive ceiling of salt, they could receive the blessing of EM signals again. Gaining updated data on their mobile devices was their top priority, but they could not stay still in the meantime.

“Myonri, a little higher.”

On Quenser’s instruction, the thick folded-up arm extended upwards. It was as thick as the steel beams used in buildings, so after it came to a stop in a diagonal position, Quenser climbed up it and straddled the crab-like end.

He had risen above the first level to arrive at the front line on the surface.

When he peeked out, he saw the vast expanse of salt and the white pyramids made from stacks of cylinders. He also saw the masses of salt rivalling large tour busses in size that were rolling every which way after those pyramids collapsed. There was also a trench labyrinth dug all over the salt land like the underside of a circuit board, but he could not see that with his sense of perspective thrown off. The battlefield was as hellish as ever. They did not want it to be as flat as a mirror, but all these things covering it also created more opportunities for death.

However, that was not the first thing he noticed.

He first noticed the odor that reached his nose.

(What’s that burnt smell?)

He could see Legitimacy Kingdom military vehicles here and there. He could not believe they had actually driven up onto that dangerous salt land. A supply vehicle was relatively close by. It looked something like a boxy snowmobile on continuous tracks, but it was actually a support vehicle filled with replacement pinecone-shaped drills for the tunnel-drilling vehicles.

Since that supply vehicle appeared to be alone, the tunnel-drilling vehicle it should have been paired with may have been destroyed. It could have fled back to the maintenance base zone, but it must have been driven by an overly obedient soldier who wanted to continue gathering intelligence.

An intermittent low rumbling shook the air.

This was not anything as contradictory as a safe war and they were not an audience viewing a fireworks show. The Baby Magnum and the Police Queen continued their intense battle even now. Since the enemy was a police Object, it may have been doing some profiling based on the Princess’s fighting style to work out her personal idiosyncrasies.

Quenser looked around and then brought the radio to his mouth.

He had left the salt tunnel and could finally send out a message.

“Princess, we have arrived at F9. We will now place explosives on the salt wall. Send us the request when the timing is right for you.”

“Quenser? You need to get out of there!!”

He received an awfully urgent response just before a 50m colossus crossed the trench about a kilometer away from his position. He had lost sight of it until now because the fine salt swept up from the white ground had briefly obscured his vision like a thick layer of snow in the air.

The Police Queen had only slid a little bit, but he could still tell. Just like an ad for cleaning the bath pipes, that white wind was racing toward them with ferocious speed.

“Shit!”

“Please stay still. Relax!!”

Myonri’s mechanical left arm grabbed him by the collar just as the fearsome gust of wind slammed into his body. A sharp pain ran through his cheeks as the fine salt struck them. He could not possibly open his eyes under these circumstances.

“Ugh, cough!! Heivia, Elise, you haven’t been blown away like a leaf in the wind, have you!?”

“Don’t worry,” said Heivia. “I even had time to consider kicking her down in the middle of it all.”

“Does anyone have a business ebook I can read?” asked Elise. “Like 100 ways to get a fresh start after getting to know the absolute worst people?”

This explained why the Princess had told them to get out of there. Crawling around at the feet of those colossal weapons was suicidal, so there was no safe zone here.

Or he assumed that was the issue.

However…

“Quenser, go back underground! It’s targeting you!!”

“Princess?”

Surely she meant it was “coming their way”.

What did she mean it was “targeting them”?

It normally required another Object to destroy one of those nuke-resistant colossal weapons. That was supposedly the view all four world powers took, yet this one was ignoring the Princess to instead attack the infantry crawling along the ground?

He did not have time to think about it any longer.

A distinctive purple light washed over them. This was clearly not just a searchlight.

“ALS!? Oh, no!! It’s scanning the terrain!!”

“What did it just do to us!?”

“That’s a special wavelength of light used in forensics. Purple would be 385 nanometers. It highlights fingerprints, footprints, blood stains, and other samples needed to track the crime. You can think of it like a mechanical version of a police dog, so can we really escape this!?”

The air cushion Second Generation had just crossed to one side of the large trench and now it moved back to the other side. It seemed to be slaloming as it approached them. Arms covered the front side of its spherical main body like a fan or visor and the unidentified main cannons attached to those swept over to aim at them.

“This is bad, Myonri! Back up! Back into the tunnel!!”

He tried to shout, but it was too late.

As soon as the targeting lenses whirred, one of that bizarre police Object’s main cannons gave a roar!!

The sticky splat that hit Quenser in the face was not at all what he had expected.

He was utterly baffled.

He thought his heart had stopped on reflex, but once he calmed down, he realized this made no sense.

Heivia looked like he could barely breathe after also taking a load to the face.

“Ew, cough!? Wh-what the hell is this slime? Was that a lotion cannon!!!???”

“Ah, ahhhh!! I’m slipping! Everything’s all sticky, so I’m falling off the roof!”

With everything from her boobs to her glasses all goopy, the busty blonde frantically moved her arms in search of something nice and hard to hold onto for support, but despite her efforts, everything she reached for slipped from her grasp. Her white uniform was also slipping off of her.

However, they could not just laugh at the silliness of it all.

Quenser heard the loud screeching of a vehicle slipping on the white land a level above him. It was the Legitimacy Kingdom supply vehicle. It had the same continuous tracks as a tank, but it could not grip the ground and kept sliding a bit to the sides. The people and vehicles could no longer move.

“A nonlethal suppression weapon? Oh, I get it. They probably specialized in this direction since they’re police. So things like stun guns, tranquilizer darts, mace, batons, and shields.”

“Wait, so is that all they have? Cough, they don’t have a giant man catcher that can grab the Princess by the hips and swing her around, do they?”

They were discussing that when another shot was fired. It looked like a signal flare stabbing into the ground away from any noticeable target.

All of the sticky goop erupted into flames.

“Wha-?”

''Get out of there.

They finally understood why the Princess had sounded so urgent while warning them from her Object.

“Napalm!!!???”

It was flammable.

The flames spread in all directions. It was like a ripple of fire expanding from a single point, so the white land was engulfed in crimson hellfire before long. There was nothing they could do. The supply vehicle was stuck on the salt land and only kept slipping when it tried to move. The shocked soldiers fled the vehicle, but their fate was the same. They could not stay standing and kept falling down into the stickiness.

Nonlethal? No, this weapon let them choose whether the target lived or died.

The first wave had arrived.

The human screams were drowned out by the deafening roar of the flames taking in oxygen.

This really was a world where the people who did their jobs right were the first to die.

Quenser and the others were powerless to help them. Or rather, they had their own problems to deal with. The mystery goop had poured down on their heads too and that connected back up to the flammable substance scattered across the surface.

“Eek, eeek, eeeeeeek!?”

“No, Elise! Don’t climb down!!”

“But, but, the fire, the fire, it’s right there, the fire!”

“A 30-ton vehicle with tank-like continuous tracks will still slip, so our boots can never grip the ground!! We need to get onboard!! Get inside!!”

Their hands slipped again and again, but they managed to get the hatch open and hop down into the military engineering vehicle. That was a 2m drop, so it really did knock the breath out of them. Still, the weak student managed to move his trembling spine to force himself up and close the hatch.

A moment later, they were enveloped by an explosive roar on all sides as orange light engulfed everything outside.

They had no desire to peer through the periscope.

Quenser grimaced because he knew what that burning smell had to be. Even those tactless potatoes felt awkward knowing their lungs were filling with the smoke created by cooking their own allies alive.

The battlefield student pressed his back against the wall, sat down, and wiped the deadly flammable substance from his brow.

“Thank god this was a construction vehicle. If it wasn’t made airtight to keep dust out, it wouldn’t have severed the ‘fuse’.”

“Hey, what kind of detergent can wash out napalm? This is scary as well! A single spark of static could ignite us!!”

Naphtha was a type of gasoline, so anything that broke down oils would work. They might end up with nice smooth heads since that was the same stuff used to get stubborn scorch marks off of ventilation fans, but they would not have to worry about spontaneously combusting.

That was when they felt the tug of inertia.

The vehicle was moving.

“Myonri?”

“Um, I’d rather not to use that as a solution again, but burning away the goo gave me a grip again. Now we can move back.”

There were still some odd irregularities in the roar of the engine and the vehicle kept coming to a rapid stop as if pitching forward.

The busty blonde (who had been upgraded from sticky to bubbly) trembled tearfully with small white bubbles on the tip of her nose.

“Uwehh. I guess that would do some damage, wouldn’t it? If the engine stalls here, we can’t avoid being roasted inside this giant oven.”

“I bet the heat of the flames is preventing the radiator from cooling the engine fast enough. How about this!?”

Myonri seemed to have some kind of idea and they heard a deep scraping sound. However, the vehicle was not taking any damage.

Quenser frowned.

“You tore down the salt wall and dumped it on us?”

“Whoa!? Th-that could’ve buried us alive!!” shouted Heivia.

“But you can’t dump water on an oil fire, right? Okay, that seems to have put out the fire on top of us, so now’s our chance!”

Myonri moved the continuous tracks to back down the hill and reach the second level that had a salt roof. That sounded simple enough, but rapidly backing up with tank-like continuous tracks was difficult even with camera assistance. It was easier to just turn the gun around.

“How can they call that thing a police Object?” asked Heivia while nestled lovingly against the steel wall and crouching down. “They ignored another Object and fired napalm at the people running around at its feet. They couldn’t be more inhumane.”

“You didn’t know, Heivia? The police aren’t bound by war treaties, so they’re always shooting dumdum bullets into fleeing suspects’ backs. Fleeing ''civilian'' suspects. Meanwhile, a soldier would be thrown into solitary confinement for that.”

“They’re fighting a goddamn war here!!”

[[Image:HO_v17_BW6.png|thumb]]

“They probably think of it as fun little business trip. I doubt they’re even aware this counts as war.”

“What kind of double standard is that!? That’s it. I’m not setting foot outside this vehicle!!”

“Umm,” interrupted Elise. “A single shot from that thing will cause the entire tunnel to collapse and bury us alive and I’m pretty sure a lot of salt already got into the radiator while putting out that fire just now. If we do that too many times, the engine will definitely burn out. The melting point of salt is about 800 degrees, so it’ll probably melt onto the metal like cheese on toast.”

This really was the worst.

For whatever reason, the Police Queen was targeting the humans first.

It was probably using ALS, ninhydrin, and audio and video analysis. It used every system the police used to track its targets. Mercenaries in the jungle would use their experience and senses to track the enemy soldiers based on footprints in the mud or broken branches, but the Police Queen added a ton of scientific approaches on top of that. Of course, that would be used for more than finding evidence. It was surely hooked up to a large computer in order to profile the Princess.

At this rate, Quenser’s group had no way of supporting the Princess. They would be killed the instant they appeared aboveground. And those potatoes were not patriotic enough to act as a decoy for a nuke-resistant Object.

“That said, the Princess will lose if we don’t do something. Do you think an Object with such broken morals will actually listen to the White Flag signal? I don’t want them hunting down all the survivors with flamethrowers and napalm rounds!!”

Was the Police Queen aware of the Baby Magnum’s specs? Did it know it could win a one-on-one battle, so it intended to take out the puny infantry to eliminate even the smallest possibility of an upset?

“This feels different somehow.”

“Quenser?”

“I mean, there is a difference in specs between the First Generation Baby Magnum and the Second Generation Police Queen, but the Princess can still get a clean hit in. I get wanting to avoid an upset, but is that really a good enough reason to distract yourself in front of an enemy Object? If it tries fighting the Princess while essentially messing around on its phone, the Princess could get a clean hit in and it’ll lose a battle it should have won. Could the Elite really look away from the deadly gun barrel when their life is on the line?” Quenser was so lost in thought that he forgot he was covered in napalm. “They could ensure their safety if they could just get a single hit in on the Princess, so there’s no need to delay that by eliminating other uncertain factors. The best way to avoid being hit is to destroy the other Object as quickly as possible, so why this?”

“I get what you’re trying to say,” said Elise. “But aren’t you being awfully vague about any of the specifics?”

“Something else scares them more.” He sounded confident. “What would you do if someone was holding a gun in your face, but a huge dump truck was rushing in from the side? You’d look away from the gun to face the greater threat, right? The Police Queen is afraid of something even more than the Princess’s main cannons. But what?”

“Hey, Quenser!?”

He ignored Heivia telling him to stop.

The battlefield student climbed the ladder, opened the hatch overhead, and climbed back out into that world of death and scorching heat.

Myonri was the one who calmly stated the problem with this.

“Leave if you want, but there’s no escape if you get caught in that sticky hell.”

“That’s why I’ll do this.” He pulled the thick wire from the winch, wrapped it around his hips, and waved toward the vehicle’s camera. “If things look bad, reel me in with the winch. That way I can escape the napalm area.”

“Okay, but I can’t do it gently. Don’t blame me if it slices you in two.”

It was unclear how serious Myonri was about that, but Quenser crouched low and walked through the salt tunnel with his lifeline in place. The makeshift ramp was difficult to climb on foot. Reaching the first level required using his hands as if doing some light mountain climbing. Salt must not have been as flammable as wood or paper because the napalm fire was already gone.

Then he realized something.

(Crap, I can’t see up to the surface without the military engineering vehicle here. I could always use a bomb, but would the Police Queen notice?)

“Quenserrr.”

A sweet voice followed after him.

He looked back to see Elise Montana still wet and sticky, but from the detergent now instead of the napalm. She was running over to him with a shovel in her hands.

“What are you doing here? You could have stayed in the vehicle and drank some coffee.”

“Eh? They had something so wonderful in there!?”

“Hm? We transferred the coffee equipment over from the destroyed drill vehicle, remember? It included a mill for the beans and a dripper.

The communication disruption from the second level’s salt tunnel had caused some less important harm as well.

They had to meet face to face to discuss this kind of thing.

“B-but I couldn’t bear to just sit there waiting. I’m starved for information, so please let me do something. I’ll do anything.”

“Hold on, where’s your lifeline?”

“Awahh!?”

That said, Quenser would have been stuck without her help.

The first level salt trench was about the width and depth of a large tour bus. They could tear down the wall with a bomb, but they could not allow the Capitalist Corporations Second Generation to notice them. They wanted to observe things as silently as possible.

Which meant…

“Okay, I’ll lift you up, Elise.”

“That’s fine, but please don’t let your feet slip so you fall backwards! That would be far worse than a suplex!!”

Operation Piggy Back was a go.

Quenser was on the bottom and Elise on top.

Since she was soaked from the detergent used to get the napalm off, the presence of her crotch was impossible to miss. Plus, she must have been afraid of being suplexed because her thighs were squeezing him excessively tight. Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage’s experience points were skyrocketing from this government job that meant having his face squeezed between a beautiful woman’s wet thighs.

“(Damn, if not for this, I’d have abandoned her long ago.)”

“I’m actually helping, so can you please not mutter threatening things like that?”

However, Elise still could not reach the upper level even when stretching her hands up. They had no choice but to strap a mobile device to the shovel she had brought and reach that makeshift selfie stick up like a periscope.

After filming the hellscape above, they pulled it back down.

Quenser lowered Elise Montana and extracted his head from the giant tunnel formed by her legs.

Then they both viewed the small screen.

“There it is. And it’s still fighting the Princess.”

“Eek.”

If they had been fighting for this long, it meant the difference in skill was much smaller than the difference in specs suggested. There was not a devastating difference there, so it made no sense for the Police Queen to annihilate the surrounding infantry “just in case”. It would not have the focus to spare.

“Huh? It’s firing that sticky stuff at the Princess too, isn’t it?” said Elise. “Is it trying to roast the Object so its reactor overheats?”

“Overheating an Object that can survive a nuke? Not likely. That’s probably high-pressure water.”

“High-pressure?”

“In other words, a water jet like the ones used to slice through steel panels in factories. They apparently increase the cutting edge by upping the friction with artificial diamond dust or something, so I bet this is a similar process. Firing a heavy goo will pack more of a punch than smooth mineral water.”

After watching the video for a while longer, they saw one of the Princess’s seven main cannons get torn off pretty spectacularly. Destructive power like that might be enough to tear down a broadcast tower at the base.

“Isn’t it dropping some hedgehog-like things while it fights? What are those prickly things? I hope they don’t blow up.”

From a distance, they could see those mechanical chestnut burrs rolling around like tumbleweed in a western, but even those would function as deadly rollers that skewered any flesh-and-blood human they happened to hit.

Nevertheless, Quenser doubted they were weapons meant to cause destruction.
He stared at the footage of those devices that looked like concrete tetrapods or sea mines covered in protrusions.

“The spikes sticking out on all sides are exactly a meter long and they’re painted with 10cm-wide stripes. They must be baseline rulers for triangulation. The same idea is used for the video analysis of security cameras. It increases the accuracy of radar locks and of image gathering.”

“Eek.”

“Modern security cameras can apparently predict when someone is going to shoplift based on the tension of their cheeks muscles. They must be following the movements of the Princess’s lenses and joints, so it’s all over once they work out the patterns there. Any chance of a direct hit goes away.”

“Eeeek!? So she’s in a lot of trouble!?”

“We are too. If it stabs echo rods into the ground and has them send out terahertz waves, it might be able to detect the humanoid silhouettes through the thick layer of salt. That’s how airport security sees inside luggage and coats without opening them.”

“Eh? Talk about scary new tech. That doesn’t let people see right through your clothes, does it?”

That aside, Quenser thought quietly. Why did it switch its power output between anti-personnel and anti-Object attacks? Was it afraid of destroying the salt flat below itself if it used too much power?

The Police Queen was outdoing the Princess with its high-speed mobility based on the ski-like air cushion system, so was it most afraid of losing its freedom of movement?

“…”

“Hm? Quenserrr???”

This was odd.

It felt like the Legitimacy Kingdom and Capitalist Corporations were looking at this situation differently. Things were not fitting together, like a shirt buttoned up in the wrong holes.

With those two propulsion devices held together, it could rapidly accelerate. When it spread the back ends in a V-shape, it could rapidly brake. When it adjusted the angle to break the symmetry, it could make sharp turns. It was indeed swishing back and forth over the trenches dug in a labyrinthine path around the salt flat, so would it really be that troubled by someone blowing up the ground?

“Wait.”

The blond boy paused the video and zoomed in at one point.

But that point was not the Object.

It was one of the white pyramids of salt cylinders standing in the background.

“Wait, wait. I’m missing something. The issue isn’t with the switching over of power output.”

“Um, I have no idea what you’re talking about anymore, so should I just stay quiet?”

“Why did it light that fire?” Quenser felt like he had grasped the crux of the issue. “If it simply didn’t want us messing around out here, it only needed to fire that slippery lotion cannon. Those slippery conditions make it too dangerous to move for people and for vehicles, so we couldn’t have dug through the salt or blown it up. Trying anything would only have led to accidents.”

“Can you stop calling it lotion before we try to have a serious discussion here, you son of bitch? Anyway, you can never be entirely sure what someone is going to do. Wouldn’t it be better to seal the deal by burning them away than simply hoping they won’t do anything?”

“That’s not the point.”

Quenser zoomed in on another spot of the same freeze-frame.

This time, it was a faint white haze covering the Object.

“We overlooked that giant thing’s presence at first because of this stuff.”

“Um, you mean the fine salt thrown into the air like snow?”

“That’s not salt.”

Dry ice, liquid nitrogen, etc.

A number of possibilities came to mind, but Quenser went with the most extreme of the bunch.

“It’s probably liquid helium. The coolant is let out as a gas once it’s been used, so it takes the form of a white haze.”

“Ah!” cried Elise.

“Its main cannon is a water jet that fires a liquid, so it wouldn’t need that stuff.” Quenser slowly sighed. “Same for the air cushion system it uses to stay afloat. So where is it using that liquid helium that has to be below -200 degrees? And what for? If we narrow down the candidates one by one, we should find the answer.”

“In that case…”

“Yes, that fire had a purpose other than killing, but it can’t exactly show off the weakness it’s afraid of having exploited, so it disguised it as a way of attacking enemy soldiers. There must be some reason it had to burn this salt land. It’s that simple. That’s why it altered its power output and used fire for the finishing blow.”

He stopped speaking there because a sticky cannon blast passed by overhead. It was not directly aimed at them, but a giant sticky beam sliced through the sky all the same. Just like with water from a hose or a water gun, some of it splashed down on them.

Even if it was more of a mist than anything, napalm was napalm.

In the worst case, the fine mist of explosive could behave like a fuel-air explosive.

“That’s our cue to leave. Myonri, reel it in!!”

“Umm, I don’t think your radio is going to reach her inside the tunnel.”

“Then what’s the point of this lifeline? Okay, let’s run, Elise!!”

“Awawa, awa, awa. Please don’t leave me behind!!”

Just as they were descending the makeshift slope from the first level to second level tunnel, the student glimpsed something yellow out of the corner of his eye. Since everything around them was white, he assumed it was some weird afterimage like when you looked at the sun and blinked, but it was not.

There really was something in the roofless first level trench.

It was a yellow construction helmet.

“There’s someone here.”

Quenser thought his heart was going to stop.

He could hardly believe his eyes.

“There’s a normal civilian here!!”

“It’s too dangerous, Quenser!”

Elise tried to stop him, but they could not send signals out from the salt tunnel. The boy was afraid too, but he still had to step outside and shout into his radio while prepared to get covered in that napalm goo.

“F-Frolaytia, I’ve located what looks like a local worker! He’s probably a civilian!! Give me approval to save him!!”

“Probably? I need proof! Couldn’t he be a Capitalist Corporations spy or a local cooperator!?”

“We can figure that out later, but if I don’t save him, that guy will be cooked by napalm!!”

“That isn’t good enough!!”

His commanding officer bluntly rejected the idea.

But even now, that middle-aged man without a gun or a jacket was rolling around while covered in the sticky goop. It looked silly, but he could not get up once he was like that. If he could not escape on his own, he would be killed as soon as the Police Queen ignited it all.

They did not have a second to spare, but Major Frolaytia Capistrano was still going on about rules and regulations.

“We are in the middle of a military operation at the moment. Not to mention that the interior of a military vehicle is classified information. We cannot let an unidentified individual ride one for no reason!!”

Elise started to say something, but Quenser held out a hand to stop her.

If it came down to it, could he insist he was a student instead of a soldier and save the man anyway? It was disappointing that the man was not a cute girl or a beautiful woman, but being a middle-aged man was no reason to abandon him with a smile.

But after he thought up his excuse, his commanding officer’s voice reached him over the radio.

“This is a crucial mission, so you need to remove that uncertain and unpredictable factor from the battlefield and also draw out any crucial information he might have. Over!!”

He could only laugh.

To translate that into modern language, she was saying a reason to save him could be invented so he should quit talking about it and just save the man.

“I’m so glad I ended up in the 37th. There’s nothing better than serving under a great woman.”

“U-umm!!” cut in Elise. “You can act cool if you like, but how exactly do you plan on saving that sticky old man!?”

“First of all, we don’t call him that! It makes it harder to want to save him!!”

A change occurred while they shouted at each other.

While he struggled vainly to stand up, the man ended up sliding down the slope Quenser’s group had created and fell to the second level. Now Quenser would not have to attempt to climb that slippery slope from hell.

The napalm fluid had not made it inside the tunnel, so they could stand and run like normal there.

Which meant…

“Elise, you recover me.”

“Um, huh?”

“I’m going to get a running start and slide headfirst!!”

He did exactly that.

He took a running start like he was doing a running long jump and he slid on his belly as soon as he left the tunnel. If he continued along like a penguin, grabbed the struggling man’s body, and had Elise pull back on the wire, he could return to the safe tunnel.

“I…”

Well, that was plan anyway.

Unfortunately…

“I can’t reach him!!”

He was only a meter away, but he could not do anything about that meter. He knew without even trying that any attempts at moving would only spin him around before he slid off in the wrong direction.

He could not save the man like this.

Even the slightest spark would engulf this entire area in flames.

“Ahhh!!”

He heard an odd yell, glimpsed something passing by right next to him, and saw sticky Elise Montana wrap her arms around the man’s legs.

“Quenser, grab onto me! Hurry!!”

“Fine, but without you back there, who’s going to pull in the wire wrapped around my hips? Our radios can’t reach Myonri inside the tunnel!!”

“Ah, awahhh!?”

The clumsy woman was clumsy even in an emergency.

The disconcerting roar of flames consuming oxygen reached them from somewhere. Wherever it was coming from, the entire napalm area would be engulfed in flames in the blink of an eye.

“!!”

Quenser twisted around and aimed his mobile device toward the tunnel.

“The signal won’t reach!!” warned Elise.

“I’m using the camera’s flash! The tunnel is straight, so the flashing signal should reach them!!”

A powerful tug reached his hips.

He was frantic at this point.

“Ah!! Elise, don’t let go of that man!! Keep a tight grip on his legs or hips or whatever!!”

“Wait, with both hands? Then what about me!? I don’t have a lifeline, so I’m not connected to you!”

“I’m holding onto you!! Speaking of which, your boobs get all the attention, but you’ve got a pretty nice butt too.”

“Hey, stop that!”

They were all desperate to survive. Quenser was pulled back into the salt tunnel by the winch while he held onto that sticky woman’s lower body with his face sticking into a soft spot.

The tsunami of fire washed over the outside world a moment later, but…

“Cover it up!” shouted Quenser while Elise’s thighs tightened down on his face in fear. “Break apart the salt to cover up that slug-like trail!! We can survive if we sever that fuse!!”