Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume20 Chapter 6 (section)

===Part 4===

Once one piece of the puzzle crumbled, the rhythm of the entire battle collapsed.

Just like a crack only a few millimeters long causing an aircraft made from tens of thousands of precision parts to break apart in midair.

The white beam looked like a welding torch burning the predawn sky.

Former Elites Catherine Barbotage and Putana Highball brushed their rain-wet bangs aside with a hand and shouted while operating personal amphibious motorbikes used for ocean patrols.

“Someone was shot down!!”

“We can’t let that happen again. Let’s make a more direct attack.”

The two amphibious motorbikes tore through the oceanwater to approach the Manhattan. Of course, that was a 20km collection of firepower. Even if it had trouble aiming at anything too close, it could still crash into them or attack them with waves. Close in was not a blind spot. In fact, it just put you in range of its most deadly attacks.

Scrap materials were floating everywhere. All of them must have belonged to sturdy warships originally. They had to skillfully swerve around those to avoid hitting them.

There were other things caught on some of the metal panels, like a scrap of a military uniform or even a severed arm.

That wasn’t the end result of making a mistake.

That was the end result of doing everything right. The Manhattan 000 wasn’t really a weapon anymore – it was a human slaughterhouse. Charging at it was not an attack – it was diving headfirst into a woodchipper.

However…

“It might be impossible for normal people, but not for us. Because we have been thoroughly modified as Elites,” muttered Catherine under her breath.

In her opinion, the Manhattan crashing into them was a more fearsome attack than the cannons. But at the same time, that required the Manhattan to approach them. A normal person would be obliterated along with their boat, but that might change with an Elite’s thoroughly boosted muscles and reflexes. They would have a chance to jump onto the Manhattan’s coast just as their amphibious motorbikes were being destroyed.

Metal containers rained from the sky. Anything not fixed in place properly on the Manhattan would be thrown into the air by the inertial forces. Any one of those would be enough to kill them instantly.

Catherine heard a bubbling sound reminiscent of a fizzy drink. It came from the ocean below. The Manhattan may have used extremely small air bubbles to move its large size so quickly. Which would mean it was now close enough for those bubbles to reach them.

However…

“…? Be careful. I sense some ‘eyes’. Rising rapidly from below!!”

Immediately after Putana’s shouted warning, the ocean surface parted and several spear-like weapons burst out. Were those high-tech torpedoes fired from the submerged portion of the Manhattan? It felt more like having a machinegun firing up at them from the ocean floor. Putana and Catherine barely managed to avoid them by twisting the handlebars to snake along in an S-shape, but that wasn’t the end of it. After shooting up to a height of 10m, the explosives inside the spears detonated them and they each scattered more than 800 small metal balls in every direction like a deadly umbrella.

“That’s just cruel!!” Catherine clenched her teeth.

These weren’t all being controlled by a complex AI. These were unmanned weapons controlled by simple circuitry that reproduced the movement of swarming insects through basic yes or no questions.

Still, they were nearly at the Manhattan’s wharf. After being exposed to so much danger for an extended period of time, their minds had to be such a mess of adrenaline and endorphins that their sense of pain wasn’t working properly, so they would have to check for injuries after arriving on land.

“I hope they don’t have a weapon that concentrates all the city’s exhaust gases and polluted water.”

Catherine suddenly realized Putana was looking a bit higher than straight ahead.

Puzzled, the younger girl looked in the same direction.

“S-so many ‘eyes’…”

At first, it looked like a sandstorm.

Or like a swarm of hornets covering the horizon.

But it was neither. That was the hundreds of thousands of drone weapons launched by the Manhattan. Each one was only the size of an open parasol, but with that many, they looked more like an Eastern dragon flying through the sky.

“There are too many ‘eyes’. We can’t avoid them all!!”

No plan or instructions could help them now.

The two girls were soon swallowed up by the swarm of light metal and silicon weapons.