Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 18===

They had not had time to leisurely put some distance between them.

Quenser, Heivia, and Kevin were caught in the middle of a giant water vapor explosion and collapsed onto the pure white ice shelf.

“Dammit! Son of a bitch!! What was that!?”

“I-I won’t die here. I’ll be just fine! After all, I have gifted blood!! My brother’s an astronaut!!”

“That’s as useless as a blood type horoscope, you dumbass!!” Heivia shouted in absolute desperation. “There was a huge explosion right next to the Spectre Q&A! Did its main cannon screw up or something!?”

“No,” corrected Quenser. “It was the Princess’s armor fragments we gathered. We placed them on the ice and had the Armadillo’s radio signal act as a guide. The Princess blasted them and caused a water vapor explosion, so the melted and vaporized armor turned to spray with the water. So what do you think happens if someone fires into that curtain with an explosive laser designed to efficiently transmit its energy to the Princess’s armor and explode?”

“Oh…ohhh!!”

“That’s what happened, Princes!! The Spectre Q&A was hit by the shockwave from that point blank blast. Finish this before it can recover from the knockback!!”

The Information Alliance’s Second Generation had a powerful main cannon and the unexpected damage created a short lag before it could recover.

The Princess was not about to overlook that.

The revolver-like turret at the base of her main cannon turned to select the low-stability plasma cannon out of the multiple options. As the Spectre Q&A wobbled and seemed to lack life, she did not hesitate to target the center of its spherical body.

A bright light and an explosive sound surged out.

The blast pierced the vital point, destroying the reactor, and the Second Generation seemed to swell out. So much energy burst into the outside world that it caused an unbelievably large explosion. It seemed to wear away the lifespan of their retinas and eardrums, but they felt a strange high in addition to the pain. The disconcerting pressure hanging over them was eliminated, their safety was assured, and they were overwhelmed by an instinctual elation, much like staring into a flickering flame.

This feat was known as dragon slaying.

The sight seemed to easily break the floodgates of human rationality.

Kevin raised a frightened yet strangely excited voice.

“W-we did it!! I didn’t die!! I’m not gonna let myself die single!! Ohhhh!! Let’s get back to the base zone where love and romance await me!! …H-huh? Why don’t you look happy?”

The two idiots ignored the middle-aged bachelor as they stared blankly into the distance.

“Hey, what do we do now?”

“About what?”

“We can’t figure out who’s behind the drug war using the ergots without either that Pilot Elite or the Object itself, right?”