Even after an hour, the Fernleg Scorpion hadn’t given up on the Allrounder.
Once it figured out the trees were blocking its claws from reaching, it buried itself in the snow and just sat there with only its black eyes poking up above the surface, watching the Allrounder.
Chihaya had looked up the Fernleg Scorpion in the encyclopedia app and was eating her onigiri with a troubled look on her face.
Fernleg Scorpions inhabit deep-snow mountain terrain. They lie in ambush beneath the snow and weaken prey with the venomous stinger in their tail before feeding. Their exoskeleton gets chilled by the snow, making them undetectable by thermography, and the snow absorbs sound, making acoustic detection difficult as well.
These traits make surprise encounters common, and if lag or anything else delays your response, apparently it’s not unheard of to notice too late that the Actanoid’s leg has been severed by a claw.
The annoying part is that dealing damage head-on is impossible without heavy machine guns, and they have a habit of relentlessly pursuing prey.
“weak point is the heart on the underside if you flip it……”
She finds a dissection diagram — the last thing she wants to see while eating — and Chihaya grimaces and puts her onigiri back in the tupperware.
There’s no way down this mountain except to defeat the Fernleg Scorpion. If it chases her downhill on that gliding descent, there’s no way the Allrounder can outrun it.
So how does she take it down.
Weak point is the abdomen. Can’t attack it unless she flips the enormous Fernleg Scorpion onto its back.
Chihaya mentally runs through the Allrounder’s weapons.
“the assault rifle’s useless, so……grenades?”
No matter how tough the exoskeleton, catching it in an explosion should do it.
But Chihaya looks up at the summit and shakes her head.
Set off an explosion up here and trigger an avalanche, and the Allrounder won’t come out of that unscathed either. This isn’t a situation that calls for a suicide attack, and the repair costs would be brutal.
She keeps it in the back of her mind as a last resort and thinks.
Attack options at this point are limited to bare hands. Going hand-to-hand against a New Frontier animal with the lag involved isn’t just reckless — Chihaya is a shut-in with zero martial arts experience. Immediately ruled out.
“there’s gotta be something”
It’d be ideal if the Fernleg Scorpion just gave up and wandered off, but those blank, expressionless eyes poking out of the snow haven’t shown any sign of moving.
Staring at those eyes, Chihaya has a sudden idea.
“right. let’s try fishing it out”
Chihaya pulls the wire from the Allrounder’s hip.
She unspools about three meters, winding it around the arm, then ties the end into a loop. This kind of fine motor work is exactly what humanoid machines like Actanoids are good for.
She throws the loop like a lasso at the Fernleg Scorpion’s eyes sticking up out of the snow.
The plan: get the loop around those periscope eyes and hang them from a tree branch, and the underside should become visible.
The moment the loop slides neatly around the Fernleg Scorpion’s eyes — the eyeballs retract smoothly back into the snow.
“are you kidding……. they’re retractable? like a slug……”
She waits, hoping they’ll pop back up, playing a kind of off-brand Whac-A-Mole — and then the eyeballs reappear outside the loop, having apparently burrowed through the snow to a new position.
The Fernleg Scorpion is winning.
“hmmmm……”
She reels in the wire, undoes the loop, and in a fit of frustrated spite whips it down at the Fernleg Scorpion’s eye like a lash.
A pathetic little smack — the wire bounces off the eyeball. Apparently they’re pretty resilient.
She opens her bottle of tea, takes a sip, and thinks about her next move.
After a while, Chihaya hooks the wire over a tree branch. She creates a fulcrum point at about three meters up and anchors the winch to the trunk.
She ties the other end of the wire — the one not connected to the winch — back into a loop, then tosses that loop in the direction away from where the Fernleg Scorpion is.
Setup complete, Chihaya steps onto the mat and sends the Allrounder running toward the loop.
The Fernleg Scorpion erupts out of the snow in a spray of white and starts after the Allrounder.
Not getting away this time — barreling across the snow at full speed, and the instant the Fernleg Scorpion’s leg hits the wire loop, Chihaya triggers the winch remotely.
“heheh, boop”
In an instant the loop cinches tight, locking around the Fernleg Scorpion’s leg — and without losing a beat the wire reels in, and the Fernleg Scorpion’s body lifts up out of the snow.
The winch is built to haul Actanoids, so it has serious pulling power. A Fernleg Scorpion is nothing — in almost no time it’s been reeled in wire and all, dangling from the tree.
“oh, wow……. gross”
Chihaya murmurs involuntarily at the sight of the Fernleg Scorpion hanging with its weak-point abdomen exposed.
The Fernleg Scorpion is trying to right itself by slamming its tail into the snow. The countless writhing legs are also deeply unpleasant.
Chihaya raises the assault rifle to get this over with.
She aims at the heart’s location and pulls the trigger.
In an instant the Fernleg Scorpion’s abdomen blows apart — scattering the subcutaneous fat thick enough to keep it hidden in snow for hours — and the bullets reach the heart.
Blue blood from the Fernleg Scorpion spreads across the snow.
“I did it……. heheh, traps are the best”
Unlike last time, the Allrounder isn’t damaged either. Satisfied with the clean win, Chihaya unwires the Fernleg Scorpion’s corpse.
All that’s left is the descent.
The trip isn’t over until you’re home safe, she mutters to herself, and sends the Allrounder running down toward the foot of the mountain.