The True Stars of the Show Finally Appear

[One Grappler is breaking through!]

[What about close air support!?]

[They still have their hands full!]

Zudodododo! The ground loudly shook and a monster with a height of 5

meters popped out from the depths of the dust cloud.

It had forelimbs covered with rocky carapace armor, multiple legs that

looked like they could easily trample people to the ground, an eyeless face,

and a drooling mouth lined with large human-like teeth. Its appearance

easily induced a feeling of disgust.

"Hiro, we'll handle that one."

"We're fighting that thing with swords? Are you insane?"

"Any lifeform, no matter how monstrous, will die once their head is cut off.

I'll attract its attention so make sure to follow after me."

"Wai…!"

Lt. Col. Serena gripped her longsword with both hands and plunged straight

toward the giant aggressive lifeform (Tentative name: Grappler). I

immediately ran after her in a fluster. I can't possibly leave it all up to her

after all.

[GIEEEEEEE!]

I don't know if Lt. Col. Serena's white combat armor simply stood out too

much, but the Grappler immediately zeroed in on her after unleashing a

menacing cry and whipped out its armored forelimb. Dammit! It didn't have

eyes so how could it have spotted her so easily? It looked like it was rather

eager to turn Lt. Col. Serena into minced meat with a single swing.

Its rock armored arm finally slammed onto the ground and caused soil, dust,

and rock fragments to scatter around. Lt. Col. Serena's figure vanished

within the dust. It won't be funny if she was done in with one swing, but

through my universal mask's HUD, I managed to spot Lt. Col. Serena

successfully avoiding the monster's arm smash and running around it.

As expected of high-tech equipment. It looks like this amount of smoke and

dust is nothing.

"Hiyaah!"

A sword flashed and cut the creature's arm that was still buried beneath the

ground. It looks like in front of a blade that could easily cut open a power

armor, mere flesh and bones weren't even worth mentioning.

[GIYAAAAAA!?]

The Grappler started thrashing around as black blood spewed from its arm

stump. And then, it brought down its remaining arm – the right one- straight

at me.

"–Gh!"

I immediately held my breath and the world around me slowed down to a

crawl. It was as if time was being stretched. I moved and shrugged off the

air suffused with metallic sand clinging to my body and avoided the path of

the creature's arm. I then timed my sword swing so I could make use of the

momentum of the creature's arm to ensure I could cut it clean off.

I had to match the arm's movement and cut it in a specific way so my sword

blade wouldn't break off. Plenty of blood spilled out from the arm once

again and the Grappler screamed in pain.

[You did great. That was a perfect score.]

I heard Lt. Serena's praise through the universal mask's comm. I looked

around to find out where she actually was and saw her on top of the

Grappler's shoulder. She probably ran up the Grappler's body earlier.

[Haaah!]

She unleashed a vigorous slash. While standing on the Grappler's shoulder,

Lt. Col. Serena used her mono-molecular sword to cut off its head in one

swing. The Grappler's body immediately stiffened and started falling onto

the ground.

Actually, It was about to fall right on top of me.

"Ah, dammit!"

I desperately ran away and managed to avoid the Grappler's falling body.

Lt. Col. Serena made a brilliant landing right beside me. Dammit. This

person is really too much.

"You're still so tense even at the very end of the battle huh."

"Well, you can't really compare an uncouth commoner mercenary like me

to yourself who's a refined noble daughter after all."

"I didn't say that to demean you. You're unmistakably a qualified warrior

who can overcome your fears to go against mighty enemies. It's worthy of

respect."

After saying so, Lt. Col. Serena flashed me a gentle smile.

I feel like I'm just being strung along, but oh well. Even I would feel a bit

embarrassed when given compliments like that.

"Ah, yeah. So what's the current battle situation?"

"It looks like they've settled it on their end as well."

The only giant creature that appeared was the Grappler we just defeated,

and the other enemies consisted of dozens of Twisteds. It looks like the

marines finished them off without any trouble.

"The support barrage was barely there. What the heck are you doing?"

[Sorry. That was my miss.]

Elma's apologetic voice came through the comm. Well, it's not like I was

seriously mad anyway. There were quite a number of enemies after all, so I

guess I can forgive her for letting one pass through.

Or rather, it wasn't just Krishna that's being piloted by Elma that was

providing close air support. There were imperial military dropships and

small combat craft as well. Beside me, Lt. Col. Serena was ordering her

forces to make sure that the large creatures wouldn't get through.

"It's a bit of a waste, but just use the shot-cannons. It would be better than

letting one of those get through again."

"Oh, don't worry about that. We'll cover the ammo you will use up during

this operation."

"You heard her. Don't hold back and fire away."

[Roger that. I'm gonna go at it then.]

Elma cut the call.

"Alright then. It looks like we'll have to endure this situation for a while

more huh…"

"Yes, for the time being."

Ahead of us stood something that looked similar to a mountain – though

clearly artificial – that was a bit obscured by the metallic dust storm.

After completing the investigation of the suppression ship, we set off once

again in order to continue our pursuit, and we managed to find this place in

the end. We dealt with a lot of twisted along the way mixed with a number

of Grapplers just like the one we finished off earlier. After wading through

the waves of enemy creatures, we finally managed to find this manmade

structure out here.

"I wonder what the heck that is? An anthill?"

"In any case, it definitely serves as the creature's nest. I'm sure the attacks

would get more and more intense the closer we are to that structure."

It resembled an anthill but scaled up to a ridiculous degree. According to

the readings displayed on my universal mask's HUD, its height was

approximately 300 meters or so. It was shaped like an uneven mountain.

Was it built using soil? Its color didn't really resemble the color and

appearance of the ground around it. It was mostly reddish-brown in color.

"So what are we gonna do about that? It'll be simple enough to just blast it

to bits, I think."

No matter how huge it was, in the end, it was still made out of soil and

rocks. It would be completely helpless in front of laser cannons that smash

shields and punch through dense combat ship armor. It's literally a tower

made of sand.

"I'd like to do that if I could, but…"

"Do we really need to insist on capturing that guy? What was his name

again? Uh, Geritz?"

"That's how it is. Well, I'm not the only one insistent on the matter. The

order came from the higher-ups."

"But as we are now, I don't think we have enough forces to break into their

nest without the aid of close air support. Actually, it's flat out impossible."

Currently, it's only thanks to the close air support from Krishna and the

imperial combat ships that we are able to repel the attacks of the dangerous

lifeforms crawling all over the place. If we were faced to deal with

Grapplers along with the other creature types without air support, we're

basically doomed.

But, well, unlike the colonists armed with low-powered laser rifles, we have

elite imperial marines from the Graccan empire with us. Their overall

power, skills, and combat readiness are more than several leagues apart

from the colonists. So if we were prepared to suffer casualties, we might

just be able to barely pull it off.

"It's alright. There are reinforcements coming very soon. Our advanced

force is just responsible for finding the enemy base. The ones coming over

are our main attack forces."

"I see?"

I already think the marines accompanying us are plenty strong enough, but

she's actually saying the reinforcements will be even stronger? I tilted my

head as Lt. Col. Serena seemingly received a transmission. She talked with

the other party through her comm for a short while and then looked up at

the sky.

"The main forces are here."

"From the sky?"

I followed Lt. Col. Serena's gaze and looked up at the sky. I managed to

make out the imperial combat ships and drop ships hovering above us. And

beyond them was an object that seemed to be rapidly descending.

"Oi, oi. Don't tell me it's an orbital bombardment?"

"No. As I said, it's reinforcements."

The object that was wrapped in crimson due to aerodynamic heating rapidly

fell near the artificial structure ahead of us. It mercilessly crushed the earth

beneath it and caused an explosion of dust and rocks. The ground beneath

our feet shook from the impact.

"That's one heck of a powerful entrance… So, what the heck is that

anyway?"

"Our main ground attack forces."

"Ah, now I get it…"

The object that was now stuck on the ground resembled a giant metallic

stake. An object fell off the stake and started to change form.

Yes. They were soldiers made of cold, hard advanced metal alloys that shed

no blood or tears and didn't have fear of injury or death. They were

humanoid in shape, with a metallic skeletal frame much, much stronger

than human bones enveloped in thick layers of metal alloy armor. They had

muscle fibers made out of advanced metal alloys as well and could crush a

regular human into meat paste with a single swing of their arm. They also

wielded heavy-caliber weaponry that could never be used by regular fleshand-blood humans.

The heights of these humanoid killing machines ranged from those roughly

as tall as an adult humanoid to ones standing to a towering 5 meters.

"So it's military combat bots."

I was almost tempted to cry out T*tanfall![1] but I managed to hold myself

back in the end.

"That's right. Since we've mopped up the ones outside, we'll just leave

storming the base to them and watch from here."

The armored marines started building a sturdy-looking temporary base

camp again. I followed after Lt. Col. Serena and headed toward the camp

being constructed by the combat engineers and their bots.