Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 13===

“Heivia.”

Quenser called out at the bottom of the falling-apart tanker, but the noble boy did not respond.

“Heivia, listen!!”

“Shut up!! What do you want now!? Are you still thinking of doing something after this irritating as shit ending, Quenser!?”

“I’m saying I won’t let it end this way!!”

Heivia fell silent and Quenser continued.

“I know what Karen and the others are after and I know why the Megalodiver lost its confidence and decided to sink them instead of us! What will you do, Heivia? I know what that bastard’s Achilles’ heel is, but attacking it means wasting the chance at survival that Karen and the others worked so hard to make. What will you do!? Are you prepared to continue ahead even if it means crushing their feelings underfoot!?”

“That’s perfect,” quietly groaned Heivia. “A tear-jerking story isn’t my style. I’ll destroy all of this and have a good laugh afterwards.”

Quenser extended his hand and Heivia Winchell grabbed it to stand up.

“First comes the fire door right in front of us. We need to do something about it and find a way up to the deck. We don’t have time. We need to bite into the Megalodiver’s Achilles’ heel before it can slaughter those maids.”

The fire door was thick because the tanker had been made to be filled with heavy oil and the like.

Simply attaching a bomb to the surface of the door would not be enough. The blast would take the path of least resistance and hit Quenser’s group instead.

The fastest method would be to drill holes in the door and fill the inside with explosives.

However…

“Hey,” said one of the large soldiers who had tackled down the watertight door. “You set a bomb on the door and we’ll pile our backpacks in front of the door in place of sandbags. If we use our full weight to push the backpacks forward, the blast won’t reach us.”

“That’s true, but you understand what you’re suggesting, don’t you? The impact is sure to break both your arms!”

“We’re well aware of that.”

The two large soldiers laughed while cracking their shoulders and rotating their arms around.

“Hey, noble boy, you’re gonna be facing an Object to save your family’s maids, right? Then you can’t be wasting any time here. Focus on your own job.”

“Sorry.”

“Introduce us to a few of them afterwards. A group date with nothing but maids sounds like heaven on earth from a Legitimacy Kingdom perspective.”

“On second thought, you sons of bitches can go straight to hell.”

They swiftly implemented the plan.

With a muffled explosion, the rusty fire door was blown inwards.

Quenser spoke as he walked past the soldiers clenching their teeth and writhing in pain.

“Someone treat their injuries. If you remove a carbine stock, it can work in place of a cast.”

“Kh… Shut up and get going! Our saviors are waiting!! If you let a single maid die, we’re not going to forgive you!!”

Urged on by that voice, Quenser and Heivia ran on.

They climbed a nearby staircase on their way upwards.

“What exactly are we going to do, Quenser!?”

“You have a shoulder-fired missile, right? We’ll use that!!”

As soon as Quenser shouted that, his foot broke through the metal staircase. Heivia grabbed his arm and helped him regain his balance.

“Karen and the other maids used the Summer Vacation’s ridiculously huge guns to target empty ocean. There was a tuning fork torpedo there. Do you remember those, Heivia? We saw one while approaching the Megalodiver in those hard diving suits.”

“Those are the robots that look like a fish with a U-shaped tuning fork attached, right? They essentially increase the Meglaodiver’s eyes and ears since it detects enemies by sound.”

“Right. They fired fifteen kilometers away from the Megalodiver. I don’t know if it’s three or four, but the Object always keeps a few tuning fork torpedoes around itself. It might read a single sound from multiple directions and determine the enemy’s accurate location and movements from the subtle differences in the wavelengths. It must predict when the enemy will fire based on the tiny noises of the barrel or lenses moving before firing.”

“And Karen destroyed one of those…”

“A bug without fangs got in its eye. That’s why it turned around.”

They continued up and up.

With a harsh sound, the last watertight door opened.

The night was already coming to an end and the ocean appeared to be burning with the orange of dawn.

“Hurry! Going outside raises the risk of it detecting our heartbeats. Use the shoulder-fired missile before it fries us with its lasers. We need to crush another one of its eyes and ears!!”

“Roger that!!”

Heivia removed the giant tube hanging from a shoulder strap just as the sound of something tearing through the wind passed by overhead.

A moment later, the island’s coast exploded with tremendous force. The landscape was torn into and a new bay was formed.

“A ship’s gun!? Dammit, Karen. Are you still supporting us!?”

“We can complain later. Check north-northwest at just within five kilometers away. There should be a metal reading swimming along with the Megalodiver’s movements. Use your sensors!!”

Quenser leaned out over the deck’s railing and checked the ocean with the sensors on his binoculars.

Heivia rested the missile launcher on his shoulder and peered inside the targeting lens.

“Where is it? I don’t see it. Where is it!?”

“It has to be there! …I found it. North-northwest at 4.5 kilometers! Target it!!”

The narrow vision of the binoculars showed a large U-shaped piece of metal sticking up from the orange ocean surface. Unlike when swimming in the deep ocean, they seemed to act like buoys while fighting on the surface.

“I found it too. I just have to shoot that, right!?”

“No, that isn’t enough.”

Hearing that, Heivia removed his eye from the lens in confusion.

“What?”

“Karen and the maids blew away one of them, but the Megalodiver is back to normal. If we simply blow it up, the Object just has to fire the next one out there. It can make up for any that are lost.”

“Then what are we supposed to do!?”

“I have an idea. Turn off the targeting sensors and fire a missile to detonate somewhere between three and five meters in front of the tuning fork torpedo.”

“That won’t destroy it.”

“We’re not trying to. Hurry!!”

With that urging, Heivia held up the missile launcher once more.

After checking the tuning fork torpedo’s location with the sensors, he intentionally switched them off. Now the missile would not be guided and it would simply fire straight.

“Don’t blame me if this doesn’t go well!!” shouted Heivia as he pulled the trigger.

A trail of smoke followed the explosive and it slammed into the ocean at the exact point they wanted.

The explosion shot a pillar of water forcefully into the air.

“It worked. Let’s go!”

“Go where!?”

“Down to the rubber boats!!”

Quenser ran across the deck and found the rubber boat they had ridden in on. He did not hesitate to jump over the railing and Heivia followed.

“Heivia, you handle the boat’s engine. Take us to the tuning fork torpedo!!”

“Okay, but explain this to me!!”

The military rubber boat shot along the glowing orange ocean.

No laser beams shot from the Megalodiver despite it supposedly being able to accurately detect one’s location from the heartbeat.

“It uses multiple high-quality microphones, an analysis supercomputer, and the resonance with the surrounding tuning fork torpedoes to swiftly and accurately search out the enemy’s acoustic signature from amid the din of explosions. However, that means it can’t stay in top form if a problem occurs in any one of those things. The easiest one to cause problems would be the tuning fork torpedoes. One of those was flipped over by the nearby explosion and the tuning fork isn’t functioning as normal.”

“And that’s why we’re safe? But why are we moving toward it? Not to mention that it was our fault it wasn’t completely destroyed.”

“As I said, a new one can be supplied if it’s simply destroyed. That won’t destroy its golden ratio. That’s where Karen and the maids failed and that’s why we had to think up a different method.”

The rubber boat seemed to be jumping across the ocean surface rather than travelling through the water. It looked a lot like a skipping stone and it was difficult to not be thrown out.

“What are we going to do about that? Are we going to keep destroying them until the Megalodiver’s stock runs out?”

“That could work, but we don’t have time. That’s why we’ll use the opposite method.”

“What?”

“All we have to do is destroy its golden ratio. If we can’t reduce the number, we just have to ''increase'' the number.”

The sound of bubbles passed by directly below them.

It came from a fish-like robot swimming just below the surface.

“What was that!?”

“The Megalodiver sensed a problem with the system and sent out a new tuning fork torpedo. Exactly what I wanted!”

Soon, the rubber boat reached the target area of sea.

“Heivia, find the flipped-over tuning fork torpedo. It may be starting to sink after the Megalodiver sent out a shutdown signal. We need to pull it up!!”

As he spoke, Quenser dove into the ocean.

A fair bit of skill was needed for free diving, but he had little trouble thanks to all his heavy equipment. In fact, resurfacing was the hard part.

As expected, the old tuning fork torpedo had begun to sink.

If it had been obviously destroyed, the Megalodiver would likely have immediately hit the switch and abandoned it.

But in the half-functioning state, the Pilot Elite had hesitated in order to see if it could right itself.

The Object had a limited number of the things.

Quenser did not know how many it had in stock, but it was unlikely enough to abandon them without thinking about it first.

He embraced the giant fish robot.

It was large, but it was made from light materials such as reinforced plastic. While still holding onto it, he removed his unnecessary equipment.

Humans had natural buoyancy and he hurried to the surface with Heivia’s help.

“Bhah!?”

“Hey, Quenser. What are we supposed to do with this!?”

“Attach it to the boat,” he quickly answered. “The Megalodiver has already sent out a new one and we’ve brought the old one back. It now has the golden ratio plus one. The balance has been thrown off, so it should lose its accurate acoustic searching system!!”

“Is it really that simple!?”

“It’s not an issue of numbers. Systems have trouble with unpredicted situations. It could probably handle ten thousand imitation tuning forks scattered around, but I doubt they expected a situation where it itself sent out a completely identical one. Unless the Elite was trying to commit suicide, she would never make that decision. In fact, that Elite probably has no idea what is causing the trouble right now.”

Heivia removed the sling belts for his missile and assault rifle. He used them to attach the tuning fork torpedo to the cords on the outside of the rubber boat while Quenser gave his conclusion.

“The real fight begins now. Let’s attack its weakness at the Bamboo Pipe, Heivia.”