Editing Sorcery Hacker:Volume1 Phase1 (section)

===Part 5===

Who was it that uttered a confused “huh?” in that moment?

Was it the human traffickers who thought they had complete control of the scene? Was it the enemy Sorcery Hacker known as Funny Snatch? Was it the Dark Elf girl who was about to have everything taken from her? Or was it Teleria Nereid Aquamarine who had been hiding behind cover until a moment ago?

They all watched as a boy walked out into the open and flicked one of the crystal tarot cards floating around him.

“''Break connection.''”

A moment later, an explosive boom erupted in the distance. It came from the distant bell tower. And the only other person there who seemed to realize what that meant was Funny Snatch, the Sorcery Hacker who was carrying a giant bowgun-style Linkage Plug.

“What did you do!?”

There may not been nothing righteous about the words of a Sorcery Hacker.

This may have been the arrogance of a criminal.

But there was something he had to say here.

Something he had to say in the presence of that girl who had been driven to the edge of the cliff.

“I won’t do anything as cheap as hack them myself. Young lady, I’ll show you what your grandma’s creations are really meant to do!!”

Ayato could have hijacked everything with this Linkage Plug sword, but he chose not to. By destroying the bell tower itself, he eliminated the human traffickers’ processing space and returned the hacked mana-conducting silver scorpions ''to their original controllers''.

They reverted to what the girl’s grandma had made and what the girl had hoped for.

They were back in the government’s control, so what would those nearly 20 Zootoxin Mk. IIIs do if they spotted some suspicious people lurking in the attack site?

All hell broke loose.

“Wah, wah! Wahhhhh!?”

The rough men had initially calmly turned toward Ayato and pressed the stocks of their magnum-style sorcery guns against their shoulders to aim at him, but then the closest giant scorpion beat one of them to the ground with a large pincer. He did not even have time to widen his eyes in surprise before the enormous poison stinger tail moved. That directly-injected torrent of poison could knock out a man-eating tiger from a range of 400 esoule<ref>Approximately, 480 meters.</ref>, so when it hit him from point-blank range, he began convulsing on the ground.

The other thugs pressed the top of their guns to their foreheads to engrave the memorized letters and numbers on the disintegrating lead bullet before aiming at their target. By passing through the fireworks-like muzzle flashes, the torrents of mist mana produced supernatural phenomena like flames and vacuum blades. Those two were Primary Burst and Tertiary Tornado respectively. Their magnum-like calibers were large enough to require a shoulder stock, so the magic using the large disintegrating lead bullets and the contained mist mana were all quite destructive…but that mana-conducting silver armor could not be harmed by the kind of magic a single person could produce. In a pure contest of power, it could not have been more obvious whether a flesh-and-blood human or a sorcery device would come out on top.

Colorless mana was given its traits by the four basic elements of fire, water, wind, and earth, but none of them was a match for the Zootoxin Mk. III.

The thick mana-conducting silver forcibly deflected it all and attacked the criminals head on.

While either crushing them below its legs or knocking them away with its powerful tail, three of the sorcery guns were broken and neutralized in no time.

“Ah, ahh! Ah, ah, ah!!”

The one remaining man held his cheap sorcery gun that had been cheaply customized to be larger than a submachinegun and tried to flee, but he was already surrounded. He could not escape onto any road or alley around them because the mana-conducting silver scorpions were blocking every path.

“D-dammit!! What the hell is going on!?”

Instead, the kidnapper reached for the brown girl. He likely assumed the dark elf would function as a hostage if her grandmother had built these things, but that was actually the worst decision he could have made. Hadn’t the girl said her grandma had built them to protect everyone?

They all took action to fulfill that top-priority objective.

A Zootoxin Mk. III moved in between the brown girl and the kidnapper to shield that innocent life. The man’s outstretched arm was deflected by thick armor, but before the fear could show there, a large pincer mercilessly slammed into his face.

“You…”

The girl had squeezed her eyes shut, but once the expected impact never arrived, she hesitantly opened her eyelids. When she saw the scene before her, she finally reached her fingers out toward that armor.

“You’ll…protect me???”

That went without saying.

She herself had explained why they had been built.

“But…”

“What is it, Miss Teleria? I don’t think I’ve ever looked cooler.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Is it just me or are those scorpions locking onto us now?”

“Of course they are. The Zootoxin Mk. IIIs have regained control and we look as much like a suspicious Sorcery Hacker group as those thugs do.”

“Y-you mean?”

“They will target all of us here. Plus, I am powerless outside of Sorcery Hacking. So a question: who needs to pull out their sorcery guns now?”

“What!? If you’re going to show off, then you need to clean up after yourself!”

But “I will not be accepting any complaints” was one of Ayato’s favorite phrases, so he gently whispered in the blonde girl’s ear.

“Miss Teleria.”

“Sigh, what is it?”

“I have no one else I can rely on. You are my only hope.”

He was 100% serious about this.

“Uh.” She was unsure what to say in response to this surprise attack. “O-okay, fine, fine, fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine!!”

(I’m pathetic! Oh, I’m so pathetic! Why do I always let him manipulate me like this!?)

She was more than half in tears as she drew full-auto handgun-style sorcery guns from her left and right holsters and finally aimed at the mana-conducting silver scorpions through the dot sights. But the human trafficking scum had already proven that using simplified magic was not enough to defeat those things in a firefight.

Even with the large-capacity disintegrating lead bullets and mist mana provided by the large caliber, they had been overpowered. Teleria instead gradually built up damage by rapid-firing small, low-recoil magic, so she could not hope to directly destroy an opponent like this.

That was why she had a different objective in mind. She pressed the slide of her guns against her forehead to engrave the necessary letters and numbers into the disintegrating lead bullets. She changed the structure of the magic.

“Secondary Ex Grow Up!”

The red dots of the laser guides pointed not to the Zootoxin Mk. IIIs themselves, but at the stone pavement below their feet. Then came the muffled sound of the rapid-fire gunfire passing through the built-in suppressor. She must have been using a really nice suppressor because the empty cartridges being ejected onto the ground were actually louder. The fading blue light gave its last shine as they hit the ground and they lost their color like withering flowers.

The water and healing had an immediate effect in the gaps between the stone pavement. With the sound of something hard straining under pressure, the flat stone pavement swelled up and a great quantity of roots and trunks burst out. Even when the land looked perfectly leveled, there would still be plants stubbornly growing there. Teleria had simply accelerated their growth.

It was like an explosion.

Even if they could not directly break the thick mana-conducting silver armor, the thick bark could keep them from moving. The “explosion” at the scorpions’ feet hit them like a trap door swinging up, their flat bodies were lifted into the air, and they were flipped over.

Needless to say, those mana-conducting silver scorpions were not designed to flip themselves back over without assistance.

And this was no time for Ayato to be hiding behind the blonde girl’s back and cheering her on.

There was another enemy.

The Sorcery Hacker known as Funny Snatch still had his giant bowgun-style Linkage Plug. The chewing sound coming from his mouth may have come from some kind of thin-sliced jerky. There were no textbooks in the world of Sorcery Hacking, so it was common for people to have constructed their own rules for maintaining focus.

“Chew. Looks like it’s time to scram. Chew, chew.”

“You really think I’m letting you get away? I doubt those meatheads could have constructed this criminal operation that ropes in the government to cover for you. No, the main dish our ''client'' is interested in is you.”

“Tch. Chew. You damn leashed Forward!!”

The air whirled around disconcertingly.

It was not that the Sorcery Hacker had done something new at this point. While hackers in movies might work wonders with minute movements of their fingers, there was only so much they could do in reality. A Sorcery Hacker’s skill all came down to how many cards they had prepared in advance and when they chose to play them.

So…

“If I had my payment in hand – chew, chew – I wouldn’t have had to mess with this.”

Laughter joined the chewing noise as the enemy Sorcery Hacker known as Funny Snatch aimed his giant bowgun toward the heavens.

No.

“I always work with a dual core, partially as insurance for times like this. Chew. One of those was the bell tower I was using to control the Zootoxin Mk. IIIs. I never mentioned the other, but I’m also resonating with an aerial guidance light to borrow its power. And that’s at about Level 25.”

“…”

“Chew, chew. Simply put, that leaves one full calculation base to work with, but I’m not gonna bother trying to retake control of those scorpions at this point. That’d be too inefficient since I’m linked with something much more interesting.”

Ayato slowly looked up at where the Linkage Cable bowgun was aimed.

He saw what was floating there.

“It’s really just a balloon bungalow. Chew. You can find those in any decently-sized city, but I’ve erased this one from the control system.”

“I see.”

“And what is currently attacking us from the sky? A crimson dragon. Chew, chew. Now, question two: if a pesky fly buzzes in front of its nose, what do you think it’ll do?”

The answer was simple.

A max-power dragon breath was guided by human hands to vaporize the giant crane landmark and accurately attack a specific point in Fire Castle Town Flared.