Estimated reading time: 9–11 minutes
Chapter 27
I lightly exercised, stretched my body, and logged back in. This takes place after I finished editing the video and posted it while praying I wouldn’t get banned this time. I posted a total of 3 videos – one of walking around in the AP at various places, one of AP combat, and one of unarmored combat. I don’t know if they’re interesting, but they should provide some kind of information.
When my vision opened up, I was in the AP cockpit as usual, and on Reina’s lap where I’ve grown accustomed to being.
「How’d the posting go?」
「Well, I think it went pretty well.」
I converse with trepidation regarding the concept of a highly advanced NPC who permits meta commentary. My surroundings are the same as the place we were fighting, with more machine beast corpses piled up around us.
Now that I think about it, there was talk of how your body gets left behind if you log out outside of town – so she must have been protecting me. As I go to express my gratitude, a lithe finger is abruptly shoved into my mouth, pinning down my tongue.
「Tan!」
「Ohi, I cahn’t talk proprly like dis!」
「Hmm, there’s no salt huh. The ocean’s too polluted.」
As she said that, Reina removes her “gratitude cancelling” finger from my mouth. I had taken off the oxygen mask inside the cockpit because it was suffocating, but maybe I should make sure to keep it on from now on. As I’m lost in thought about silly things, I notice Reina’s anxious expression.
「…What should we do next?」
Now that I think about it, there was some talk about how I’m supposed to stay with her. In that case, our goal of defeating the machine beasts has already been accomplished, so if there’s nothing left, the time where she locks up my body again will start up.
That would be convenient but boring. And it’s not like there’s anything else to aim for either… Just as I was thinking that, I spot one big thing. This is something I should take a look at, otherwise it would be far too dull.
「Hey.」
「What’s up? No need to worry about power, there’s still some left over from all the kicking.」
「Listen. There’s a place I wanna go next.」
「Oh? And just where might that be?」
Since she’s asking, I confidently shoot back with the most supremely interesting thing of all.
「The Strain!」
「…You’re kidding, right?」
I wasn’t joking, so we continued heading further east. Rather than keeping watch outside the cockpit out of caution, Reina just looks at me, grinning from ear to ear. Yet somehow, she’s slaughtering every single machine beast that comes out – it’s terrifying.
The surroundings have become more like grasslands, and there surprisingly few machine beasts around. But as I ran, I noticed something on the ground that caught my attention. A grotesque beast’s head. Just the head was over several meters long – far too big for a machine beast.
It was probably originally some kind of lizard or something. The head had been forced into an unnatural human-like shape by metal beams. While the flesh had long since rotted away, over half of the cranium remained. There was almost nothing left of the jaw, with tattered ears hanging down limply like a tongue. And deep inside where the eyes should have been, countless tiny skulls stared vacantly into the void. Creepy.
「Ugh, what is that?」
「It’s one of those Apollyon Fusions you wished for.」
「No way! Is it a robot?」
「The Fusions have Apollyon in the name, but they’re actually completely different. Originally, they were going to be machine-only configurations using imaginary atomic reactions. But that was rendered impossible after the ‘Base Collapse’. And so, humanity welcomed the year 2050 carrying terror in their hearts, and dragged out the Apollyon Plan from the trash heap.」
I see, so the original plan → failure → ruin → panicked revival, something like that. Seeing my confused expression, Reina gives a wry smile and continues:
「But with the ‘Base Collapse’, too many things became unusable. So the scientists came up with an idea. If the form is Apollyon and the capabilities are sufficient, that would be a success.」
「…So they used machine beasts?」
「That’s right. See, inside that skull there are several small heads, yeah? They’re all machine beasts. Chimeras cobbled together by cutting up and stitching together the flesh of a huge number of Strains destroyed by nuclear weapons, using the remains as a base. It’s become a symbol of mankind’s terror.」
「But aren’t they already past being terrified if they’re chopping up machine beasts?」
「Humanity was trying to escape the results of their own technology, you see. Claiming it was impossible with our methods – only Strains can defeat Strains, stuff like that. Those grotesquely inefficient massive bodies dozens of meters high were like objects of worship. Making such a shoddily controlled system, honestly unforgivable…!」
I don’t really get it, but Reina really seems to hate the Fusions. I wonder if she did something regarding them? Staring at the creepy head – the remnants of that Apollyon Fusion – a sense of unease creeps up and I open up part of the cockpit. Good, insides are properly mechanical rather than more of that flesh. Reina says this form is closer to the original Apollyon plans. Though the size difference is massive.
However, from what she just said, it seems the past Apollyon plans were also quite shoddy. Since they were fully mechanical, mass production would have been easy given sufficient resources. And lightweight designs using negative mass materials meant they could battle even while doing somersaults. Meanwhile the Fusions have only sluggish movements, not much better than equivalently powerful hunks of junk.
「But even now, can we really go see the Strain and make it back alive? I’m getting worried.」
「Seriously, only now you’re worried!? Well don’t fret, we’ll be fine. Strain can’t support their own weight so they’re slow. The AP should be fast enough to escape. But there are mortal dangers, so if things look dicey, I expect you to fall back.」
「So for you, it’s kinda like an attraction?」
「I suppose you could say. For me, the scary thing about them is just how they regenerate, and their toughness. Without special ordnance, I couldn’t lose to them even after fighting for 3 days straight.」
「You’re way too unreasonable, you know that?」
「Well there’s only 3 of us second-gens in the whole world after all. Number 1, number 2, and number 0 (Reina)… production stopped there.」
…Come to think of it, I may have gotten an incredible ally here. Not just fusion-grade weaponry, but a second-gen beastkin as well. Could this emergency quest actually be possible? I see – so they have the tech to produce monsters like that, yet they’re struggling to stabilize massive haphazard robots. That must be what she meant by “escaping their own technology”.
Thinking about various things, I continue advancing forward. Other than the thuds of the AP’s footsteps and Reina’s humming, the world is perfectly quiet. Crystal trees bloom flowers as they cover the buildings swallowed up into the ground.
「Fmm, hmm hmm~」
「What was that again, the opening theme for Bububoob……BooBub」
「Correct! Oh yeah, what manga was I lending you again?」
「The one called Super Deflation, remember? It’s about a boy who can shoot counterfeit bills out of his body, who tries to save his kidnapped sister.」
「What did you think?」
「Um… it was weird. At first I thought it was some nonsense gag manga, but then it throws in these crazy mind games. And just when it seems to get serious, there’ll randomly be these mysterious single panels. It’s kinda indescribable, I guess?」
「Ah right, that’s true. Such a weird work huh, I really feel like that’s what you call authorial voice.」
「Yeah it definitely has some strange sense of unity. Doesn’t feel congruous but you get sucked into reading it anyway. But man, you reaaally love manga don’t you, how come?」
At that, Reina falls silent for a bit, fiddling with a small rock in her palm. For the record, the similarly sized rock she had just a moment ago was shot clean through a machine beast’s brain and blown to bits. I wish she’d apologize to my poor pistol.
「I just… find it fun?」
「Nope, not an answer.」
「I mean I don’t know how else to put it.」
「Well then, what was the very first manga you read?」
「I think it was something called Kuruhito Sanka that a researcher brought in?」
「Holy crap, that freaky one right? Yeah I’m pretty sure that had some insane stuff, the protagonist almost gets forced to mate with a dog and there was people cooking or something messed up.」
「That’s the one. But isn’t it incredible? Back then all I had in my brain was combat, I thought that was all I needed. But getting hit with that shock, realizing there’s a world so different from me, different ideas and backgrounds…」
「Damn getting thrown in the deep end for your first one huh. …Which means, if your very first manga had been something like Unhealthy Orgasm Dungeon, you might have turned into an ultra-perverted woman instead.」
「Maybe so! But that was just the catalyst, you know. Fundamentally I think I just wanted to have fun, that’s who I am. …There it is. That is the Strain.」
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