Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 4===

Period 1 of hell had begun.

The potatoes of the Legitimacy Kingdom were crawling below the blazing sun and the scorching sand that reached temperatures exceeding sixty degrees Celsius. There were more than three hundred of them. Every last one of them was dripping with unpleasant sweat, some were aiming handgun-shaped sensors toward the ground, and others were slowly sticking knives into the sand to carefully retrieve can-sized pieces of metal.

Heivia tossed one to the side and spat out a complaint.

“All that worry and it’s an empty can? I don’t want it to be a real one, so why do I feel so disappointed!? There are decoys buried all over the place, but the next one could be the real deal. I can’t believe they would do this!!”

“It’s better than having real landmines all over the place, right? And getting angry is only going to make you overlook a real one.”

“And it’s a can for beef stew! They even get good food!!”

“Watch the anger.”

Quenser was just as fed up with the situation.

They were more than one thousand meters from the oasis. The tall sunflower field blooming unnaturally in the desert was already visible in the distance, but the Legitimacy Kingdom troops were moving at a snail’s pace and they never seemed to get any closer.

Plus, they were more than just sandwiched between the scorching sun and sand. Every time they heard the beeping of a metal detector, they were assaulted by enough tension to feel like an invisible stake in the heart. In all serious, it felt like they had been crawling along for over a week.

“Don’t let your guard down just because there are empty cans everywhere. You heard what the Black Uniforms said, right? There are an estimated thirty thousand mines around here. It’s a flower garden of landmines. Carelessly step on one and you’ll set off a fireworks festival at ground level.”

One of those well-behaved Black Uniforms was already melting into the desert a short distance away. They usually investigated war crimes in the maintenance base, so she was not used to being out on the battlefield. Her trademark black uniform seemed downright suicidal in the July desert. Quenser was impressed that she did not strip it off like in the North Wind and the Sun.

He was whispering his assessment while looking over at the long black-haired young woman with an exposed forehead who was likely one of Meena’s subordinates.

For some voluntary help in the ESP research rumored to be a top secret military experiment, he focused on her defenseless chest to see if he could develop X-ray vision. Really, he was just staring intently at the yellow bra showing through her sweaty blouse.

“Lemon yellow, huh? And a size-enhancing bra? …I guess not all of those well-behaved Black Uniforms have giant tits.”

“You’re scaring me. I don’t know anyone else who could say that kind of thing about a woman with the right to kill her allies.”

That said, the two idiots knew perfectly well why the flat-chested Black Uniform was so annoyed.

They too had been crawling across the scorching sand at a snail’s pace.

It was all thanks to those mines buried everywhere.

“Why would they use so damn many of them? Were they trying to use up some extra inventory or something? Have they forgotten anyone gets blown up just the same if they step on these things?”

“These are smart mines, Heivia. They have a safety that picks up their allies’ IC signal, so they feel perfectly safe scattering them everywhere. I saw on a news site that these things have passed the assault rifle to become the most common weapon on the battlefield.”

“Are you serious?” Heivia looked around while still lying on the ground. “Then what are those rusty trucks and armored vehicles I can see all over the place? They were clearly blown up by the mines.”

“They’re about as reliable as the shoplifting alarms at the entrance of a store, unfortunately.”

An irregular rumbling reached them from the distance. The Baby Magnum was probably in an exciting clash with the Capitalist Corporations Second Generation Antlion.

“Besides, this isn’t how people break through a minefield these days. Why can’t we send a downpour of shellfire this way to blow up the entire minefield and then cross safely after the fact?”

“Have you forgotten that this is the entrance to the Capitalist Corporations and the Information Alliance and that poking at the hornet’s nest will only summon an unending supply of reinforcements? The Princess is gathering the worker bees’ attention over there, so we can’t trigger a huge explosion over here.”

Quenser pulled a card from what looked like a deck of playing cards and placed it on top of the desert sand. It was a marker that reflected radio signals and connecting those dots would reveal a safe route without any mines.

“If these are high-tech mines, then can’t we sit back and get a nice tan while we wait for the batteries to die?”

“They apparently generate their own power from the desert’s heat, so they can keep running indefinitely.”

After setting down a decent number of markers, Quenser and Heivia took a break behind a sand dune while the others followed along the safe zone they had created. Clearing mines wore at one’s nerves, so they made progress by taking turns and giving each other short breaks.

However, the group for the next shift was dressed oddly.

“What the hell? Are those powered suits?”

“They’re bomb squad equipment,” said one of them. “We remembered they were gathering dust in storage, so we just dug them out.”

“Damn that busty commander! I swear I’m going to give her such a groping!!”

“Are you all okay wearing those suits out in this blazing sun? I feel like I’m going to get heatstroke just looking at you.”

“That’s why we’re covered in cooling patches. It’s so much I’m a little afraid we’re going to be too cold.”

The hunks of metal crossed the sand dune.

Quenser could only curse Frolaytia for leaving them poorly-equipped and only able to clear the mines by hand, but he guessed they could probably borrow the powered suits for their next shift. His radio conveyed the cheerful conversation of the group protected by the thick armor.

“Found a mine.”

“That was fast. Good, good. …This is the fuse here. Now let’s transform this into a lovely tray even a waitress would be comfortable using.”

Heivia took a sip of his water bottle.

“Disarming bombs sure is easy. All you have to do is grab and twist the bottom of the fuse with some pliers.”

“That’s because the puzzle-like detonators in dramas are completely unnecessary. They just get in the way if you want to remove the bomb yourself. That can happen if one fails to detonate or the situation changes, so only criminals who just have to leave them can make puzzles out of them.”

The powered suit group continued speaking over the radio.

“Dig up the sand around it. We need to see if there are any wires connecting elsewhere.”

“All checked. Lift this one up and it won’t go off.”

“Hm?” said Quenser with a frown.

Then he paled.

“Wait, you idiot! It isn’t that simp-…!!”

He did not have time to yell into the radio.

There was an explosion beyond the sand dune and the wall of sand itself crumbled like a landslide.

Even behind cover, Quenser and Heivia had the breath knocked out of them when the blast struck their backs. A little further away, the (flat-chested) black-haired exposed-forehead Black Uniform was flipped over with her legs spread, so her shapely butt was sticking up into the air.

Quenser covered his face with a hand.

“Damn, so her panties were sky blue. You mean the bra and panties don’t match!?”

“That’s not the issue here and why do I have to be the straight man!?”

The two idiots coughed and peered over the new shape of the sand dune. A portion of the desert had become a crater and the powered suits were squirming about quite energetically.

“What was that? Didn’t they say they’d removed the fuse!?”

“There was another mine buried below that one. That’s what happens if you let your guard down!”

However, the detonation of the mine was not what mattered.

The sound of the blast had reached the oasis protected by those countless smart mines.

“The Capitalist Corporations’ border patrol is going to respond to that!”

They had poked the hornet’s nest.

Continuing to crawl along quietly would be the same as waiting for death. The military force at the oasis would be coming and it was also possible a Second Generation guarding the home country would get off its butt to deal with them.

In other words, they needed to settle this quickly.

They swiftly sent a report back to the maintenance base zone and their plan was changed.

“Brave pyramid-building slaves, if you don’t want to be trampled underfoot by your own allies, then get out of the way!”

When they heard that announcement over the radio, Quenser and Heivia rapidly rolled to the side. Several armored trucks with bulldozer-like shovels on the front drove past. They scraped a bit into the sand to intentionally detonate the mines and clear a route.

But the oasis did not sit idly by.

Again and again, they heard the sounds of compressed air being released.

Narrow trails of smoke flew in long arcs and stabbed into the top of the armored trucks.

After a tremendous explosion, the scorched masses of metal flew up into the air.

Weak-kneed Heivia complained loudly about the unfairness of the world.

“Can you really call those mines!?”

“They’re top-attack weapons that target the top of a tank. There are landmines that are fired up from a thicket when a sensor detects something and then fall back down on the target. This is just a broad interpretation of that concept!!”

“We saw this coming,” someone said over the radio. “Those armored trucks are unmanned and remote controlled. Don’t think about rescuing them. Continue along the already cleared route to reduce our losses as much as possible. No matter how good their mines are, they only have a limited number. We’ll trample them all underfoot!!”

Several more vain explosions sounded.

Still, if this continued, the minefield did seem like it would run out of mines.

Quenser and Heivia plugged their ears and breathed slowly, but then things changed.

They heard a few noises much like the fireworks that signaled the beginning of an athletic festival.

Narrow trails of smoke passed over their heads and exploded in midair.

Then a total of several hundred devices fell down while spinning like bamboo copters.

Needless to say, they were additional smart mines.

If the wind blew just a little, they would probably vanish below the sand.

“Ugh.”

“Could this get any worse?”

The two idiots had to complain.

All their effort over the past several hours had been reduced to nothing, plus their escape route had been cut off.