86 - Volume 12 - Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

MARY’S LITTLE LAMB, AND THE USUAL SHEEP-HUNTING SKELETONS

The medical facility’s farm annex kept several well-trained, friendly, large-breed dogs. One of them in particular was Lena’s favorite. Or perhaps the dog was just very attached to Lena. That day, Lena was at the farm watching the free-roaming lambs, young goats, and piglets playing with one another when the dog ran over to her, excitedly demanding pats.

“There!”

“Woof!”

Lena rubbed the animal, a little too roughly in her opinion, but apparently, it was just right by dog standards. She gave into its demands, ruffling up its black fur, and it wagged its tail with visible glee. It pushed its head against her, which tickled, and Lena laughed.

He reminds me a bit of Shin, Lena thought. The dog’s pitch-black fur and pretty blue scarf were clear parallels, but the way its noble atmosphere contrasted with its friendly, kind demeanor, along with how it was just a bit spoiled, also felt very much like him.

Were Shin and the others fighting right now?

—Please be safe. Next time, I’ll be fighting with you.

But as she looked up to the northern sky—

“Whoa?!”

—a piglet charged and headbutted the back of Lena’s knees, making her fall. The piglet flipped over onto its back, its feet wiggling helplessly. Lena tried to break her fall with her hands but ended up hurting her elbows. As she remained on the ground, momentarily unable to get up, the black dog circled around her, concerned.

“Colonel, ma’am, are you all right?!” She heard a nearby captain, also here for therapy, call out to her.

The Legion overhead was a type not even Shin, the most veteran member of the Strike Package, had ever seen the likes of. Its long neck towered diagonally up to the sky, and at its tip was a hook. It had a pair of plier-like arms and bone-shaped wings.

It must have been absurdly large if it stood at the bottom of the reservoir on the other side, even if that reservoir was filled with a century’s worth of sediment. Its long neck stood a good thirty meters taller than the already-towering dam arch—or at least, it looked like a neck. It was, in fact, a crane, made up of scaffolding in a truss structure. Its massive hook, constructed from what looked like thick, metallic wires, was equipped with hydraulic equipment that could obviously lift several tonnes’ worth of weight with ease.

“A crane… No, it’s more than just that.”

Its many joints granted it a great degree of freedom, and it had a pair of multipurpose arms with shears at the end that served as high-pressure pliers for dismantling purposes. The parts that looked like the skeletal, plucked wings of a bird were its rear sub-beams, and based on the jibs and masts of its wings and arms, it could easily swing them around to strike and engage opponents in melee combat.

It had no armor or firearms, meaning it wasn’t a combat type but some kind of combat-engineer unit. And it was present here, in a dam in the contested areas not far from the second northern front.

—Just like Vika predicted.

“All units. The enemy heavy-engineer unit is to be designated Aranea. It doesn’t seem to have any firearms, but try to avoid attacking it from this position. We want to avoid damaging the body of the dam as much as possible.”

The Strike Package’s objective in this mission was to destroy the dam, but more importantly, it was to restore the river and turn the battlefield into a wetland. If they were to prevent the Legion from rebuilding the structure, they’d need to demolish it from its very foundations.

If they fired at the dam and partially wrecked it, it could collapse in a way that would prevent their combat engineers from approaching it and achieving their objective. And with the Fisara nearby, attacking recklessly could make it feel threatened enough to retaliate.

Shin looked over to the sides of the structure—it was a gravity dam, and its thick slope was wedged between the bare rock of two mountains. They had originally formed a valley, now filled with the water of the dam.

“Spread out to the mountains on the sides, go around the dam itself, and strike it from there. The Nordlicht and Brísingamen squadrons—”

But just as he was starting to give instructions, Shin noticed something. At the tip of the Aranea’s main beam was a blue optical sensor that suddenly turned to glare at them. Shin’s experienced combat instincts alerted him that the opponent had just zoomed in on them, and he keenly sensed its gaze.

Its bloodthirsty gaze.

Its rear sub-beams spread out, like the fearsome flapping of a giant bird’s wings. It swung the cranes up, the two joints at the end of them rotating, brandishing the super-heavy structures as if they were thin branches. They were formed, like the main crane, of scaffolding, and myriad feathers clung to each one, standing up in a rippling movement as they moved.

Shin heard an ominous, low rumbling in the pit of his stomach. The wings swung up to the left and right. The sound of them tearing through the air had all the intensity of the medieval Warwolf. It fanned out and fired the feather blades, which soared up in the trajectory of its wing tips. They first shot up into the sky before reaching a zenith and plummeting down toward the earth at an acute angle.

Without any need for instructions from Shin, all the units lying in hiding spread out, distancing themselves from one another, seeking cover or terrain to shield themselves from the impact. If the feathers were scatter shots or high-explosive projectiles, the trees would serve to abate the shock waves and block the fragments. Incendiary bombs would be more trouble, but the Reginleifs’ agility would allow them to escape before the fire reached them.

Then Shin realized that the projectile feathers the Aranea threw were themselves emitting the unique howl of the mechanical ghosts. He looked up in surprise and saw them spread their limbs, trying to adjust the trajectory of their descent—

“These are self-propelled mines! Be careful even after impact; they’ll try to cling to you!”

Impact.

As they hit the treetops or the ground covered in leaves, several of the self-propelled mines instantly exploded. And with that serving as a smoke screen, their fellows reached the ground, rolling onto the dry underbrush and crawling about, their limbs bent and broken from landing.

“Tch… This is annoying!”

“There’s a few of them left on the trees! Don’t keep your eyes on the ground!”

Self-propelled mines were incapable of attacking in any way except self-destructing, and they were slow to move and unarmored. They weren’t tricky opponents for a Reginleif, but there were too many of them. What’s more, they were in a dark forest with plenty of cover, making the self-propelled mines difficult to spot.

To keep from missing any, the Reginleifs switched their radars from passive to active. The units shared the mines’ positions via data link, using radio waves to detect the flocking enemies and shoot them down.

“Nouzen, get back,” one of the platoon members said. This was Tachina, who used a machine-gun configuration. “We need you to command the entire operation, and you’re not suited for a situation like this.”

“Sorry, Tachina. I’m counting on you.” Shin nodded.

Tachina was right—since Undertaker was equipped with high-frequency blades instead of a machine-gun configuration, it was ill-suited for dealing with self-propelled mines.

He let the platoon members handle intercepting the enemy and looked up at the Aranea through the newly opened gaps in the treetops. The Reginleif’s system automatically followed his gaze, zoomed in on the target, and opened a sub-window displaying it. With its wings having thrown their load, Shin could see more humanoid forms crawling up it. From the howling and groaning he could hear, he sensed it had an abundance of extra ammo prepared. Shin clicked his tongue.

“Shiden, Bernholdt, what’s your status?”

“All good, Li’l Reaper. We’re almost done sweeping ’em up.”

“Likewise for the Nordlicht squadron, Captain. Assuming more of them aren’t about to rain down on us.”

“The next barrage is on its way. Sergeant Rachim?”

“We’re almost done, too. The engineers are fine, as well,”

The reply came from the captain of the armored infantry unit charged with guarding the combat engineers.

He was told that a squadron had been pulled from the 2nd Battalion sealing off the area to protect the vulnerable engineers from the next self-propelled mine attack.

“Roger that. All units, the Aranea is slow to reload its self-propelled mines, but it can throw a great number of them each time. We shouldn’t count on it running out of ammo anytime soon. Once they land, sweep them up before the next barrage. There are no changes to the plan. Go along the side of the dam through the mountains to the north and south to approach and strike at the target.”

“Roger that.”

“Aye, aye.”

“The Spearhead squadron will serve as bait. The Nordlicht squadron will scale up from the south, while the Brísingamen squadron will head to the north through the forest.”

“Longbow squadron has arrived at the Recannac dam. Proceeding to seize the position.”

News of the Spearhead squadron being intercepted by the Legion reached Canaan’s 3rd Armored Division. Since he fully expected an ambush, he wearily looked around the misty Recannac dam at the Kadunan floodway’s northern end. Due to the terrain, the Spearhead squadron had to approach their dam from downstream, but thankfully, the Longbow squadron were able to approach the Recannac dam from upstream. They’d end up destroying the dam regardless, but this way, they’d be able to fight without having to fear damaging the body of the dam before the engineers were done attaching the explosives.

“Looks like the heavy-engineer unit they reported about, the Aranea, isn’t here.”

Hiding a thirty-meter-tall heavy crane would have been challenging even in this forest. A tank, perhaps, but the only way something so large could be concealed here was if it was capable of staying submerged underwater, which was doubtful, as it was heavy machinery.

On the other hand, the Recannac dam was near the cascading waterfall that marked the terminus of the Kadunan floodway and the start of the Hiyano River, which produced a thick morning mist. Between that and the abundance of potential hiding places in the forest, this was a perfect spot for a Legion ambush.

Since the forest impeded their field of vision and also interfered with their radar, the armored infantry spread out to search for the enemy and serve as the armored unit’s eyes. As Canaan walked through the white darkness of the mist and scanned the shadows of the thick trees…suddenly, his radio crackled out a distinctive static.

“You there, in the Úlfheðinn! You’re an ally—from the Federacy’s second northern front, right?!”

The transmission referred to the armored infantrymen, but it was sent over an emergency channel used among units in the Federacy military. Any Reginleif in range would receive and decrypt it.

But there weren’t any other units in the Recannac dam aside from the Strike Package, the armored infantry, and the combat engineers. The armored infantry stopped in their tracks and warily took cover, while the Reginleifs’ systems automatically detected the source of the transmission. It came from the opposite side: the northern bank of the reservoir, in a faraway building on the top of a distant cliff past the dam gate.

A sub-window popped up and zoomed in on the footage, matching it with the map data to call up its name—the Kadunan artillery observation site. It was originally a Federacy military pillbox, which was supposedly abandoned during the second large-scale offensive.

There was someone hiding there.

It wasn’t that they refused to give their name. They sounded like they didn’t have the time.

“Remain firmly on guard! The other bank is swarming with invisible Legion!”

And the next moment, just as the voice warned them, muzzles flashed on the opposite side of the reservoir.

<<Psyche Thirty-Three to Firefly.>> <<Enemy unit presence detected at Point Yosa.>>

<<Psyche Twelve to Firefly.>> <<Enemy advance force at Point Karakuna confirmed to be the Strike Package.>> <<High-priority target Báleygr spotted.>>

<<Firefly, acknowledged.>>

As the defensive units stationed up the Kadunan floodway began sending in reports, the Legion commander unit replied in a dispassionate manner. They had forced the second northern front into an advance operation and set a corridor of traps for them. Upon confirming the enemy’s advance force had reached the farthest point, Point Recannac, it gave the order.

<<All Psyche units are to exit shutdown mode. Cut off the enemy advance force’s avenue of escape and hold them in place.>>

Shiden and Bernholdt knew from past experience that Shin’s ability was unable to detect Legion in shutdown mode. As such, they kept up their guard despite the silence. In fact, since they fully expected a Legion ambush, they paid attention to any terrain that could serve as a hiding place and made plans to use them against the Legion.

Despite this, both units were taken by surprise.

The voices of the mechanical ghosts bellowed out at once. As a shower of dry crimson leaves obstructed their field of vision, Legion rose up all over the autumn woods.

However—

“Tch… Again with the optical camouflage?!”

—they could hear them but couldn’t see them. Even after switching their radar to active, it detected nothing. Optical camouflage—a type of camouflage unique to the Phönix. The units would cover themselves in Eintagsfliege, capable of refracting both electromagnetic waves and light, in order to became invisible to both the naked eye and radar.

Since the Phönix had to maintain high mobility, it did not carry any heavy firearms. It did not use any projectile weapons, save for liquid armor and, albeit still unconfirmed, recoilless rifles. Despite that, the blinding light of a muzzle flash erupted from where there appeared to be nothing. The rumbling that followed was the unique sound of steel plates beating against one another—the roar of a tank turret.

“A tank turret?! So these aren’t Phönix!”

“Are these Stier? No…!”

Cyclops and Freki One hopped away from the attack, firing their own tank turrets in retaliation. But the invisible enemy easily deflected their shells. This wasn’t the thinly armored Stier, specialized for ambushes.

The Eintagsfliege deploying the optical camouflage were as fragile as butterflies. So where the shells made contact, they flaked off like powder snow, forced to flap their silvery wings as they were blown off by the shock wave. This revealed the Legion hidden beneath them in all its metallic majesty.

Eight legs like iron spikes. An imposing 120 mm smoothbore gun. Boasting a combat weight of fifty tonnes and a fuselage guarded by composite armor that matched 650 mm thick steel plates in strength. And now, on top of all that, it was covered by countless silver butterflies.

“Löwe…!”

Tank types, of all things, in a forest battlefield with a limited firing range…!

Dodging the fire from the optically camouflaged enemy, Siri groaned. That was close.

“If it weren’t for you, Captain Olivia, that first shot would have hit me…!”

Olivia had the ability to see three seconds into the future. If he hadn’t kept his “eyes” open in this forest, with its poor visibility, and warned them in time, this could have ended very differently.

Siri’s Razor Edge squadron and Olivia’s instruction unit had to approach their dam from the dry side, much like the Spearhead squadron. They were lucky to have the Alliance’s instruction unit with them, since the latter were used to vertical combat owing to the precipitous terrain of their country.

As the Löwe stood dozens of meters away on the arch above them, likely fixing their muzzles on them while invisible—the optical camouflage was instantly restored between shots, making their mechanical forms blend in with the sky—Olivia looked up at them from his Stollenwurm. He spoke, Anna Maria’s optical sensor fixed firmly in place.

“We jumped right into their ambush.”

“Yeah, we did. Seems like they knew we were coming.”

“With the defensive river lost, the second northern front’s struggling to keep up. The Legion knew they’d be forced to go out on an advance operation.”

Under the vicious assault of the camouflaged Löwe, Canaan’s unit, along with the armored infantryman, were forced to lie low, unable to proceed. The metallic human silhouettes somehow managed to crawl back under the line of fire, motioning for the Scavengers following them to bring out anti-tank weaponry.

The friendly forces presumed to be holed up in the pillbox on the other bank reported the enemy unit’s numbers, and Canaan manually inputted their positions in place of the useless radar. The Löwe were apparently a battalion-size force. The Reginleifs and armored infantry outnumbered them, meaning they weren’t a serious threat, at least.

He squinted his indigo eyes sternly behind his thin, silver-rimmed glasses.

“The number of Löwe they had on reserve matches our predictions, but…optical camouflage, huh?”

Cyclops’s 88 mm scatter-shot cannon wasn’t made for a shoot-out with Löwe. Shiden dodged the enemy assault by relying on reflex, while Mika’s unit, Bluebell, returned fire in her stead. But the shot was easily deflected.

“Argh! I hit their frontal armor again!”

Whether they were using optical camouflage or not, a single scatter shot or machine-gun barrage would be enough to defeat the Phönix so long as it hit. The Löwe having that camouflage was much more problematic, especially in this forest battleground. Their speed and mobility was inferior to the Phönix, but they surpassed them in every other parameter.

Their 120 mm tank turrets boasted an effective range of seven kilometers, as well as high power capable of penetrating a Reginleif and even a Vánagandr, assuming it hit anywhere except for its frontal armor. And in terms of speed, their 120 mm APFSDS shells could travel at a hundred fifty meters per second, which slightly outpaced the Phönix’s top speed.

But most important of all was their exceedingly tough armor.

Even a Vánagandr’s 120 mm shell couldn’t penetrate its frontal armor, so the Reginleif’s 88 mm turret couldn’t hope to beat a Löwe head-on. It would have to use its agility to attack the thinner parts of its armor on the flanks, back, or top. But with the optical camouflage obfuscating the Löwe, it was impossible to aim for its vulnerable areas.

Based on the flashing of the turrets and the roar of the shots, they could follow the Löwe’s general positions, but they couldn’t distinguish their impregnable fronts from the more fragile flank or back. Every shot they fired in return was for naught, only good for blowing off the silvery butterflies to momentarily reveal the frontal armor beneath before they once again blended into their surroundings.

With the thick treetops, still lush even during the deciduous season, they couldn’t utilize howitzers to tear away the camouflage, nor could they use incendiary shells in a forest full of flammable foliage. The aged trees served as thick cover to defend the Löwe’s vulnerable spots from the Reginleifs’ line of fire.

Shiden clicked her tongue. This was a pain. If it was just Löwe, or just optical camouflage, or just combat in a forest—they had experience in each of those situations individually and wouldn’t be having this hard of a time.

“Mika, I’ll shoot next. If it’s from the side, even a scatter shot should work.”

Unlike a howitzer shell, which flew in an arc, Cyclops used scatter-shot projectiles, which traveled at low altitude perpendicular to the ground. These wouldn’t be impeded by the branches.

“If you can connect a shot, destroy it, and if not, at least confirm which way those shitheads are facin’. We have to expose their flanks first. We’ll never win by shooting them in the front.”

The Aranea launched its self-propelled mines from above, breaking through the layer of warning lines set up around the Karakuna dam. The Spearhead squadron couldn’t let these enemies from out of the blue get any closer to the Nordlicht and Brísingamen squadrons facing the Löwe, or the vulnerable combat engineers hiding in the woods.

So to draw the Aranea’s attention, the Spearhead squadron threw themselves into the area under the dam, into the dried riverbed where there was little cover, and continually fought off the self-propelled mines it threw their way.

The Aranea clearly wasn’t a combat type, but it soon learned to use one wing at a time rather than both, to cut down on reload time. Its scaffolding wings, which were long enough to give the self-propelled mines plenty of room to cling to, would then be swung up and down, sending the humanoid figures plummeting right to them from even higher up than the dam arch.

“—Don’t let any more of them land! Shoot!”

In response, Claude’s 4th Platoon, a firepower-suppression platoon with machine-gun-configuration units, turned their muzzles diagonally up and opened fire. They let the other platoons handle the already countless self-propelled mines swarming around them and gunned down the ones falling toward Tohru’s 3rd Platoon.

Since the self-propelled mines lacked any means of airborne propulsion, they couldn’t change their trajectories midfall. As such, during their descent, they were essentially target practice, but the angles at which the 4th Platoon could fire their machine guns were limited since they didn’t want to risk damaging the dam.

And so their struggle was for naught, and some of the self-propelled mines were able to slip through the barrage. Spreading out their limbs like animals, they landed on the gravel of the dry riverbed.

And on top of that—

“Claude!”

Upon hearing Shin’s sharp warning, the 4th Platoon jumped away to evade, and the next moment, a metallic shadow swept past where they stood seconds ago, cutting through the riverbed like a guillotine’s blade. By reeling out the wire dangling from the end of its main crane to its maximal length, the Aranea swung the hook like a weapon. It spun the rotary mechanism loaded onto the main crane in a half circle to propel the hook to the other side, and then it did the same motion in reverse to once again slam it into the riverbed. As it cut—no, smashed through the air, the metallic mass, which must have weighed several tonnes on its own, fell toward them with an ominous howl while slightly changing its trajectory.

“Tch.”

As Claude’s Bandersnatch retreated farther back, he tried to take aim at the hook’s wire, but the moment it skimmed against the riverbed, it reached maximal velocity. It moved too fast for him to accurately hit it. Instead, the Aranea took advantage of the moment he returned fire to use the telescopic mechanism originally meant for extending its multipurpose arm upward to slam it down onto the ground, attempting to thrust its hydraulic pliers at Claude.

Mouthing a “Shit!” Bandersnatch made a large leap back this time. In its place, Kurena’s Gunslinger aimed its sights at the Aranea. But the Legion knew they couldn’t risk damaging the dam. It somehow retreated back into the reservoir, using the dam itself as a shield.

“Aaah, dammit! If it wasn’t for the stupid dam, that thing would just be one big target!”

“Kurena, the next attack’s coming—get back!”

Autocannons fired at rapid rates and caused their barrels to overheat, meaning they couldn’t be used for extended periods of time. As the Aranea flashed its wings over the dam arch and threw more self-propelled mines at them, Raiden’s 2nd Platoon moved in to take the 4th Platoon’s place and intercept them.

“There’re too many self-propelled mines here. We’ll sweep them away—all units, evade!”

Anju’s Snow Witch aimed its missile launcher up toward the sky, firing anti-light-armor ammunition that went off in midair, wiping out most of the self-propelled mines.

“The self-propelled mines are annoying on their own, but the Aranea itself is pretty dangerous, too,” Raiden growled.

Its hook, capable of lifting hundreds of tonnes, dangled from its crane, and its hydraulic pliers packed destructive power. That, coupled with the absurd output and hefty weight of its heavy machinery, made its body a dangerous weapon. Just the hook and pliers were capable of delivering blows of several tonnes, and a direct hit would crush a Reginleif’s armor.

“Yeah… And if we climb up to the dam arch and it knocks us down, the Reginleif’s buffering and shock absorbers wouldn’t be able to take it. But before we even consider that, we need to somehow stop it from throwing self-propelled mines.”

Upstream from the Karakuna dam, at the reservoir where the vast amount of water held back by the dam was stored, was a long, narrow, and deep artificial lake formed by the natural ravine. The surface of the water, dammed so that its level was much higher, flowed down into the Kadunan floodway over the gate carved into the northern ridgeline as opposed to the dam’s crest. While narrow, it had a maximum width of five hundred meters, and so both its banks were connected by a cable-stayed bridge and a line of netting that ran parallel to it.

The dam was built in an arc that faced upstream, and the countless wires of the bridge stretched from the main tower to the bridge girder in a lyre-like structure. Between those two graceful buildings stood the large, boorish form of the Aranea.

As Bernholdt fought the Löwe on the southern shore of the reservoir, its massive form stood out conspicuously in his eyes. He had to be wary of it at all times in case it decided to launch more self-propelled mines at them. But even before that, the Aranea was simply too big to go unnoticed.

Its main crane with the hook which it kept swinging around. The hydraulic pliers on both its sides. The sub-beams that served as its wings. He’d seen all those back when they were below the dam, too, but now he saw the large, thick body supporting them, and the eight, long legs extending from its flanks and dipping into the water. Its appearance was reminiscent of an ominous, enchanting wasp spider sitting on its throne in the center of a silvery web.

It walked along the bottom of the reservoir, despite it being too deep to see the bottom. It shifted back, retreating from someone in the Spearhead squadron fixing their sights on it, using the dam’s concrete body for cover. It seemed to be taking into account that they were wary of damaging the dam—a truly nasty trick.

“Captain, as far as I can see, the Aranea’s only weapons are the crane, the hydraulic pliers, and its wings. Aside from the one at the tip of its crane, it has a few other optical sensors on its front, looking down just over the arch. There’s also one optical sensor at the base of each leg.”

Since the Spearhead squadron was on the other side, at the bottom of the dam, they couldn’t see the Aranea’s full body or how it moved. At this distance, Bernholdt would have been able to send footage using the data link, but he had his hands full fighting. Trying to focus on recording while controlling a Reginleif would be impossible.

Shin, who was also in the midst of battle, kept his responses to a minimum as Bernholdt continued.

“Whenever it tilts the main crane and pliers down, it has to lower its wings a great deal to maintain its balance. They probably function as counterweights. There’s a bridge right behind the bastard, which limits its movement, but there’s self-propelled mines swarming all over the bridge. Guess it’s taking advantage of this chance to…”

As it fell back, the Aranea extended its wings to the bridge, where the self-propelled mines climbed over the cables and main tower to load themselves onto it. Only once the self-propelled mines had crawled onto the wings and clung to their full breadth did it advance once again. Its multijointed legs sloshed through the water as they moved with heavy steps.

But as Bernholdt considered the whole sequence of events, something felt off.

“…Isn’t it too short?”

He was only eyeballing it, but it felt like the unit’s legs were far too short to stand upright in the water. Was there a village or something submerged under the water, a remaining structure it could stand on?

“Master Sergeant?”

“Aah, sorry… The length of its legs doesn’t match the depth of the water. There must be some kind of footing underneath it.”

“Could you send it over?”

Shin was referring to footage of the area around its legs. Bernholdt swiftly guessed at what he meant, but again, he was in the middle of combat. He didn’t reply, but an armored infantry accompanying him, who likely heard their exchange via the Para-RAID, made a hand sign that stood for I’ll handle it.

Since armored infantry were only slightly larger than human combatants, they were harder to detect. The armored infantryman crawled onto the reservoir’s bank and used the camera at the bottom of its visor to send the footage over to Undertaker. Shin fell silent.

“…Master Sergeant, would it be possible to drop the bridge?”

He likely wanted to drown the pesky self-propelled mines before they could be launched. Bernholdt understood what Shin meant, but…

“First, I have a follow-up report… There’s a leviathan right behind the bridge. The bigger one.”

Swimming circles in clear irritation inside the reservoir and the Karakuna River leading up to it, which were both clearly too small to accommodate its size, was a sea monster, much larger and more imposing than any land creature.

“Looks like it wants to cross over to this side, but with us and the Aranea fighting, we’re blocking it, so it’s staying away… Apparently, what they said about it only counterattacking enemies on land is true.”

Shin held back the urge to click his tongue.

“So it did show up… Meaning we can’t fire at the Aranea’s joints either, can we?”

The leviathan wouldn’t initiate an attack on its own, but if they did anything to make it feel targeted, it would counter in turn. This meant that if they were to try and shoot at the highest angle of elevation and fire shells in a parabola to fly over the dam, the Fisara would block them.

“That really limits our firing range… I imagine the leviathan wasn’t something the Legion planned for, either, but it stopping us from stopping their optical camouflage is just making this harder.”

<<Interception unit, hostilities opened.>> <Use of firebombs to counter optical camouflage undetected.>>

The Legion learned. They greedily studied their enemies’ weapons and tactics, developing countermeasures to stop them. So when the Strike Package developed countermeasures against the Phönix, the Legion developed countermeasures to counter those, too. If they fought in a forest full of flammable matter, the Strike Package wouldn’t be able to use firebombs, and the treetops and foliage hanging overhead would block off mere antipersonnel scatter shots.

In other words, in a forest environment, they would be able to effectively use the Eintagsfliege’s optical camouflage.

<<Objective of restraining the enemy advance unit achieved. Firefly to Grilse One. Undo shutdown mode on the primary force, the heavy-armored units, and commence attack.>>

They had captured their prey and put the clasp on their cage. All that remained…

<<Break through the second northern front’s old Roginia River defensive line.>>

…was to overrun and burn down their prey’s nest, to ensure they had no home to return to.

The optical footage showed the area down below, or rather the area below Lerche’s Chaika, which lay hidden as she gazed at the Hiyano River’s southern coast. The grainy, low-quality video was being shared by an impromptu communication network.

“—So you’re trying to snare us in your trap again, you fools.”

As Dinosauria that’d lain prone like statues suddenly extended their eight legs and got up—likely having received the order for the primary force, made up of the heavy-armor units, to undo their shutdown mode—Vika sneered.

The group of Löwe and Dinosauria rose from shutdown mode with the orderly accuracy of brick flagstones, without a single gap. They gathered, filling the southern bank of the Hiyano River, which cut through the battlefield from west to east. All of these Dinosauria—each of them weighing a hundred tonnes—had been brought here in the month since the second large-scale offensive while evading the Reaper’s ability to pick up on their voices. And as to how they did it…

“They were ferried via waterway after all. Having seized a river with so much water allowed them to build a waterway to transport them.”

On the other side of the Hiyano River—the northern shore—a new channel not listed on the Federacy’s map cut through the riverbank and into the large river. It traveled up into the northern wetland and flowed deep into the fog. It likely drew water from up the Hiyano River, passed through a Weisel somewhere far away, and returned downstream to this point. And it was used to ferry the Dinosauria from that Weisel all the way upstream.

On a battlefield, rivers were an obstacle, but on the other hand, they could be used for large-scale transportation. Even tanks, which would be challenging to transport on land, could be moved in entire units aboard a large ship.

Looking down on it, Lerche said:

“Apparently, the Spearhead squadron encountered a Legion heavy-machinery unit. It seems they deployed weaker heavy-machinery units to the war-torn contested zones to maintain the flow in case the spillway gate was destroyed.

“If the flow was changed upstream, their transportation plan would be set back. Since they predicted the Federacy military would try to destroy the dam, the Legion had to take their own countermeasures.”

The artificial floodway was made to gather water from multiple rivers, which established the Hiyano as a line of national defense and reclaimed land for agriculture. If the upstream dam were to be destroyed, the water flow would greatly decrease. The Legion had to consider the possibility of the bridge being damaged, too, and had to deploy forces and engineers to fend off the advance force approaching the dam.

“The Legion forced the Federacy into this advance mission in the first place, and now they’re setting up countermeasures? They’re the countermeasure the Legion set up to push back the advance operation they forced the Federacy to embark on. How ironic. They intentionally made us divide our army, only to have to split up their own forces, too.”

They pressured the humans’ defensive lines, making them send out their elites to break the stalemate and luring them into Legion territory where they could pin them down. At the same time, they planned to use their heavy-armored units to strike and topple the defensive line.

This was effectively the same operation the Merciless Queen, Zelene, tried to use on them during the frozen summer in the United Kingdom.

They made the same play.

“And there’s no chance they’ll take us by surprise this time around. Compared with Zelene, this commander unit is a third-rate hack.”

The Dinosauria seemed to be activating one by one, but except for the units standing at the very ends of the line, most of them didn’t get up. They didn’t even move. This was the Legion’s primary heavy-armor force, meant to remain hidden until they attacked the second northern front. They couldn’t risk the Federacy’s recon units discovering them, so they hadn’t spread out. For the sake of transportation efficiency, they remained in a neat line, right up against one another, and so the Dinosauria lacked the space to stand up.

Normally, after being transported along the channel, they would split up into small groups and find a place to lay in ambush—but since they learned of Shin’s presence at the second northern front, they stayed in shutdown mode and remained stacked there like cargo.

Suiu spoke. Her voice had a unique androgynous quality to it, bearing both the gentleness of a girl and the fastidiousness of a boy. And right now, it also held the hint of a ferocious smile—the cruel innocence of a feline ready to pounce.

“Your Highness, the 4th Armored Division is done setting up the encirclement. Can we eat them already?”

“Yes.”

Indeed, this saved a great deal of time compared with having the Dinosauria march through the wetland. But on the other hand, the amount of effort the Legion wasted on establishing this transport route was great. They had to dig a canal wide and deep enough for a boat to make round trips to the Weisel dozens of kilometers away. And they needed to repair the Hiyano River’s wharf, which was destroyed by the satellite missiles a month ago as part of the humans’ defensive line.

All that likely wasn’t a terrible bother to the Legion, but it wasn’t an insignificant burden, either. Now, they would take all that effort the Legion had invested in order to break the second northern front, and the heavy-armored unit they’d painstakingly bolstered and kept in reserve, and…

“Go ahead! Turn it all into nothing—wipe them out.”

The Legion masked by optical camouflage were set not just around the dam, but all along the advance force’s route. They rose up to cut off their way back, isolating each unit and not allowing them to pass.

Despite the autumn woods being full of fallen leaves, the invisible ghosts traveled quietly, transparently weaving through the trees to block the advance force’s path and the first warning line set up by the armored infantry.

“—There they are. One-trick-pony idiots.”

Under their feet, they felt the pressure, vibrations, and sounds of a wire being pulled. By the time they detected it, the fuse had gone off.

Directional scatter-shot mines detonated. The trap, consisting of countless bits of shrapnel, dispersed and fanned out in a fifty-meter range, going off over and over. The armored infantry formed the first row of the warning line. The mines set in front of them blew up and fired shrapnel, forming a sweeping shock wave that blew the fallen leaves into the air. This wasn’t meant to eliminate the enemy, but mostly to serve as an alarm, with multiple other types of mines set up alongside the scatter-shots.

They weren’t meant to undo the Eintagsfliege’s optical camouflage, which refracted both visible light and electromagnetic waves, nor to destroy the Legion’s hulking forms. But the pressure of their steps and the vibrations of a mobile weapon, which couldn’t be entirely nullified by their advanced buffering systems, tripped the wires spread between the trees, setting off the mines and warning of their approach. The explosions and flames of the mines revealed the locations of the foolish units that activated them.

The scatter shots traveled rapidly like a storm, blowing off and tearing apart the brittle Eintagsfliege and exposing the large shadows of the Legion. Their sneak attack had failed, and the armored infantry stood at the ready to gun them down.

“—This is the kind of rough tactic only the Federacy could pull off.”

Since the scout unit had completed its march and he’d finished setting up the warning line, Ishmael had little business going around the battlefield without any protection. The armored infantry told him he should back down since he was simply in their way, and so he ended up being pushed back behind the warning line.

As the 12.7 mm assault rifles roared loudly and another layer of scatter-shot mines went off, Ishmael could only grumble tiredly. Big, powerful countries had the luxury of using reckless tactics like this. Directional scatter-shot mines packed enough force to turn human opponents into mincemeat, and they were only able to use them because the majority of the Federacy’s infantry forces were armored infantry, sent in waves. In a battlefield filled with normal infantry, they could end up killing their own troops.

Suddenly, he heard the bulky steps of the armored-infantry squad leader running over to him, shouting at him through the Para-RAID.

“Get down, sailors, we’re checking the inner side!”

The squad’s armored infantry hung over the scout party to shield them, and then they threw large hand grenades in every direction, which detonated in midair. The explosion scattered blue, conspicuous fluorescent paint.

These were clearly nonlethal weapons used in consideration of the scouts. As Ishmael and his men looked on with wide eyes, the armored infantry seemed to smirk under their visors.

“These are prototype anti-optical-camouflage grenades developed for defending our transport routes. We were right to bring them, what with having unarmored soldiers like you around!”

As Ishmael looked back at the expressionless visors of the armored infantry, covered in the painted mist and shielding them from fragments, he started feeling awfully stupid.

No matter how much the nobles who took command of the overall battle may have presented themselves as ruthless, the soldiers who were out there fighting still saw the scout unit as both their important “eyes” and as their comrades. They wouldn’t sleep well at night if Ishmael and his men died in the line of duty, to say nothing of abandoning them. Even if they were refugees from another country or people from the Fleet Countries.

“You’ve got no trust in us at all, do you? We wouldn’t miss something that big.”

“I dunno about that. Compared with the leviathans you people hunt, these things are like cockroaches by comparison.”

“I’ll admit the Legion are smaller, but cockroaches?”

Ishmael seemed to forget that, as the older brother of the supercarrier, he’d named the Noctiluca after a type of plankton.

“Nah, these damn pieces of scrap are cockroaches, all right. If not cockroaches, they’re grasshoppers or locusts,” said one member of Ishmael’s scout team roughly.

This was, however, a Federacy soldier and not one of Ishmael’s crewmates. As he spoke, he reloaded a magazine and cocked his gun loudly—he’d run out of ammo while on patrol earlier.

“Unlike the leviathans or mother sea, those things don’t deserve any respect. Vermin is what they are. So let’s hit them with those scatter shots, cover them in paint and adhesive, and crush ’em.”

The soldier was an Amber, an ethnic group rare in the Fleet Countries, though many of them lived in lands adjacent to it. He looked up at Ishmael with wheat-colored eyes, the same color as the produce of this land the Legion took from them.

“And once we’re done exterminating the vermin, let’s go look for that lost baby leviathan. I don’t know much about that, though, so we’ll have to rely on your expertise.”

The scout went on to say that he could find cows and goats, though, alluding to his background as a farmer. Ishmael smirked. He never imagined he’d meet such people in this land so far from the sea.

“Yeah, leviathans are for us sailors to hunt. Leave it to us.”

Most of the operation took place in the contested area, a battlefield that the Eighty-Six didn’t often fight in. It was within the range of allied antiaircraft guns. Upon learning that the advance units were engaging the enemy, the antiaircraft guns behind the Roginia line deployed and opened fire. They blew up the Eintagsfliege fluttering in the air and interrupted their attempts to reapply the Legion’s optical camouflage. As the Eintagsfliege fell to the ground, unable to redeploy, the Löwe gradually became visible.

The second northern front was capable of handling the Legion even without the Strike Package’s Reaper, who could hear the ghosts’ voices. After all, they’d fought without his aid so far.

“Knowing that optical-camouflage units exist and how their camouflage works is good enough for us.”

The armored infantry and artillery soldiers had all come up with and prepared their own countermeasures long ago. The fact that the Eintagsfliege, which were extremely troublesome as a group but weak individually, were the core of the optical camouflage was, in fact, a stroke of luck. By simply applying a bit of originality when building their defensive line, they could easily expose the Legion beneath the fragile butterflies.

Using flexibility a Feldreß would be hard-pressed to imitate, the armored infantry fought not only on the ground, but even by climbing atop sturdy trees and shooting the Löwe in their vulnerable spots at the tops of their turrets. When Grauwolf and Ameise showed up to assist the Löwe, the infantry gunned them down, too.

Since the forest was full of obstacles, anti-tank missiles, which were top-tier attack armaments, weren’t of much use. Instead, they used heavy 30 mm anti-tank rifles, as well as rocket launchers, which were inaccurate but compensated with sheer numbers. Both of those were easy enough to handle even at the treetops with the armored exoskeleton’s superior strength.

“Don’t underestimate us, you pieces of scrap metal.”

Heroes? Elites? Brave, tragic child soldiers? To hell with that. They weren’t so far gone that they needed to rely on children.

“See that, Eighty-Six pip-squeaks?!”

The Reginleif battalion charged with maintaining the path of retreat joined the armored infantrymen’s defensive line. They left the lightweight Ameise and Grauwolf to the armored infantry and used their tank turrets, a level of ordinance infantry lacked, to take aim at the exposed Löwe. Some of them detected the enemy’s gathering point and swiftly hurried over to cut into the Legion’s reinforcements from the flank and tear them apart.

The armored infantry and Reginleifs’ counterattack routed the Legion before reinforcements could arrive. With this, the Legion force around the Kadunan floodway was greatly diminished.

Cyclops’s scatter-shot cannon and the Reginleifs’ dual heavy machine guns were effective against the Eintagsfliege. In addition, the covering fire from the armored infantry was a significant help. Their antipersonnel scatter-shot mines were relatively harmless against the Reginleifs and the Úlfhéðnar, and since this land would be abandoned anyway, they had no qualms about scattering the mines. But the large Löwe couldn’t evade them, causing loud explosions and resulting in the mines stripping their camouflage.

Upon hearing the mines go off, the armored infantry opened fire at the Löwe, which allowed the Reginleifs to slip into their exposed flanks and take them out. This was how they cooperated. One armored infantryman who returned with heavy-assault-rifle magazines from the Scavengers said this:

“Those Scavenger things are pretty convenient; they pick up plenty of ammo and mines on their own.”

If it was Fido, it’d have acted in a more endearing way, but sadly, those Scavengers were all unfriendly trash gatherers.

“And what, we’re not useful enough for ya?” Shiden said jokingly.

The armored infantryman replied—despite having a rough tone and the virile physique of a wild horse, they were a woman. She let out a high-pitched, clear cackle.

“You guys skitter around way too fast. It honestly kinda gets in our way. Plus, you look like spiders; it’s pretty creepy.”

“That’s mean.”

As she spoke, Shiden moved her cannon and pulled the trigger, felling an approaching Ameise. The armored infantrywoman ducked at the sound of the shot—an 88 mm turret was both extremely noisy and produced intense shock waves—and then she spoke with another cackle.

“I take that back. You’re just loud as hell.”

“That’s hella mean.”

“Nouzen, the prince and Suiu intercepted the Legion’s main offensive. It’s a one-sided fight in our favor for now, so no need to worry about getting hit from behind.”

“Roger that. But—”

Hearing Marcel report that the 4th Armored Division was successful in its surprise attack made Shin sigh in relief. The fact that he didn’t have to worry about getting hit from behind—or that the Legion’s main offensive force, the heavy-armored unit, might try to break through the Roginia line—was a weight off his shoulders, but still, they couldn’t take too long to seize the dam. The engineers needed time to work as well, and if they let the fighting around them drag on and provoked the Fisara into an attack, they’d be in trouble.

On top of having to defend the dam’s body, they also couldn’t fire from the front of the dam because of the Fisara behind it. The Nordlicht and Brísingamen units were still fighting to take care of the optically camouflaged Löwe. In the meantime, both squadrons and the armored infantry had gathered a great deal of information about the Aranea. How fast it was. Its range and how freely it could move its multipurpose arms. How far it could back away from the dam.

And how the rear sub-beams moved when it swung its crane and multipurpose arms…which could be used to stop it from throwing any more ammo or attacking the rearguard.

“All Spearhead units, change of plan. Shoot the Aranea from the slopes on both sides and from under the dam in a pincer attack. 2nd Platoon is to regroup with Nordlicht; 3rd and 4th Platoons are to regroup with Brísingamen and work to stall the Aranea.”

“Are you actually thinking of attacking it from the front?” Raiden said, sounding like he was through being surprised.

“That’s our safest option with the Fisara around. Kurena, once the 2nd Platoon reaches the cliff, 6th Platoon is to deploy at the designated position. Marcel—”

“Analysis of the Aranea’s footing, right? I’m already on it,” Marcel replied immediately.

As a control officer under Lena’s direct command, he assisted the Strike Package in combat and had plenty of experience as support personnel.

“Like the master sergeant assumed, there’s a sunken village in the dam, so I’m asking for a map of it. We’re currently figuring that big bastard’s range of movement.”

“Thanks. We’ve established a communication network all the way to the command post. Once you’re done, transfer the data to all units.”

“You got it,” Marcel replied with a smile and a hint of pride, like this was just what he’d expected.

Suddenly, Mele heard the rumbling of cannon fire overhead, and then he saw a white blur flash past the dam, which was just barely visible over the dense treetops. What was that? Otto, who was using a pair of binoculars to observe the fighting and saw it clearly, frowned.

“What’s that Feldreß? I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s all white and has four legs… Kind of looks like a skeleton.”

At those words, Kiahi understood what he meant. He spoke the name of the cutting-edge Feldreß with envy.

“It’s a Reginleif. Eighty-Six. Rumor has it they’re the western-front army’s elite unit.”

Otto gasped in realization.

“The Strike Package! Yeah, I’ve heard of ’em, too. Apparently, they’re these amazing heroes or something! Wow!”

Otto spoke with glittering eyes, but Mele couldn’t bring himself to nod. High above them, the headless skeletons raced.

What was this? They weren’t heroes; they weren’t amazing. They were more…

“Scary… No, those guys—I…”

…Hate them.

Mele didn’t know why, but for some reason, that was how he felt.

Dinosauria boasted a height of four meters and a weight of a hundred tonnes. They were, indeed, the apex predators when it came to land combat.

But now, incapable of standing up or moving, they were nothing but scrap metal.

As dawn rose over the heavy fog of the Hiyano riverside, a rain of fire came down on the Legion. With the river at their backs, impeding their movement, and with them packed together too densely to move, the heavy-armored Legion units had no choice but to bear the full assault of the 4th Armored Division’s artillery battalion.

Since the battalion’s howitzers were mounted on a Reginleif, they were 88 mm as opposed to the usual 155 mm ones, but they were more than sufficient for destroying the top of the Dinosauria’s turrets, which were poorly fortified. As they stood there stacked like flagstones, the metallic tanks could only stand exposed as the rain of shells mercilessly penetrated them, making them burst into flames and explode.

In the midst of this bombardment, the Alkonosts raced like bluish blurs. They were headed for the very front of the pack of heavy-armored units. Only there were the Dinosauria able to fully get to their feet. There, where the space before them was clear, they began sprinting away with the soft sound of bones rubbing against one another. They moved one row at a time, like a cloth being unraveled by the tugging of its string.

“This is the first operation since we Sirins were granted a month of training by Lady Hero Princess. We are most honored to have so much prey to hunt!”

Lerche smiled and licked her lips within Chaika, which led the Sirins’ charge. This was a smile she would only show inside the cockpit—her instincts as a combat machine spurred her to widen her eyes and smile ferociously like a starved, wild animal.

One Dinosauria turned its blue optical sensor toward her and her unit. Its turret and the eight legs supporting its body shifted to face them, using its absurd mobility specs to move at top speed without any wasted motions. In the blink of an eye, it drew on Chaika. In the end, Alkonosts were nothing but disposable weapons, and their armaments no match for the superior firepower and tough armor of the Legion’s trump card.

However—

“This is a good chance to test my training. I will not grant you the courtesy of words of respect!”

—as Chaika distracted the Dinosauria, three units from her platoon spread out behind her without a single order. Each of them lunged at the Dinosauria, with an odd delay between each attack. Since they didn’t contain human pilots, Alkonosts were all built for high-speed combat and were able to move faster than even the Strike Package, and the Sirins piloting them had quicker reaction speeds than any human.

With that superhuman speed, the Alkonosts were able to distract and dodge the Dinosauria’s two revolving machine guns and the coaxial sub-armament, which moved with its main turret. Their primary tactic was to latch on to the enemy even at the cost of the comrades that restrained and pinned it down, though without any reinforcements from their homeland, they couldn’t afford to do that now.

But the true strength of the mechanical birds of death didn’t boil down to just this. With two revolving machine guns and a secondary turret, which could only aim in the same direction as its main turret, the Dinosauria couldn’t fire at four enemies at once and so locked on to only three of the units as the fourth unit slipped closer. The Dinosauria’s hundred tonnes of weight were a lethal weapon in their own right; it tried to kick the Alkonost away, but the smaller unit dodged it at the last second.

The attempt at a counterattack forced the massive steel monstrosity to stop in its tracks, during which another Alkonost snuck behind it and caught it in its laser sights. The machine guns swerved to react, as a missile hit it from yet another direction.

Whenever the Dinosauria showed an opening, one of the Alkonosts took aim at it, and once their prey turned to react, another attacked it from a different direction. Like a pack of wolves, they repeated this until the opponent became too exhausted to move, and they did it with systematic accuracy and coordination that no wolf or even a human piloting these same Feldreß would have been able to imitate.

Sirins were nothing but Alkonost components. Mass-produced industrial goods and, therefore, standardized and made identical. Even the combat memory circulating through and referenced by their artificial brains was identical among all the Sirins. The combat data of all past Sirins was gathered in their production plant, where it was analyzed to produce optimized tactics and backed up regularly so it could be updated into all present Sirin units.

When it came to combat, the Sirins weren’t individuals, but a single, identical being. They didn’t need any words or signals to fight in tandem.

This highly accurate assault came in waves, where all the attacking units were identical in their appearance and movements, making them indistinguishable from one another and gradually confusing the Dinosauria. In addition, its feeble sensors were unable to tell which unit it was facing, which unit was in front of it, and which units were behind it or at its flanks.

“And there—checkmate.”

One unit appeared right in front of it, under its turret—an Alkonost with a Personal Mark on it. Chaika, piloted by the only Sirin unit with Lerche’s appearance, name, and memories. She shoved a missile launcher up against its turret ring like she was thrusting a sword between plates of armor. This was one of a tank’s few vulnerable spots, which could not be armored in order to ensure the turret could move.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she pulled the trigger.

The shell shot out of the muzzle, almost instantly hit its mark, and ruptured. Flames billowed within the turret, inducing explosions in the Dinosauria’s ammunition and detonating it even further. The turret blew off and went flying high into the misty dawn.

At the Recannac dam, the fighting to strip the Löwe of their optical camouflage was still ongoing. The Legion made no audible footsteps thanks to their powerful shock absorbers, but trudging through the soil with four legs would still kick up mud. Whenever their fifty-tonne bodies, with their long 120 mm turrets, cut through the air, the fog would visibly shift, and the countless leaves they pushed through also exposed their trajectory.

“They’re pretty easy to spot if you pay attention!”

Canaan spoke as his unit, Catoblepas, sped through the fallen leaves of the underbrush, and jumped through the deciduous foliage to pounce at a spot where the mist wavered. Based on the way the fog moved and the pattern of clinging leaves, he landed on what he believed was the top of its turret and fired from close range. Black smoke billowed, and the silhouette of the charred Löwe surfaced as countless silver butterflies fled from the tongues of flame lapping at them.

Silver and red rose up from the white fog as Canaan swiftly moved away. A cloaked unit had apparently turned its turret to return fire at him, but its movements exposed its position, after which it was attacked by an 88 mm turret.

“The mud, the fog, the branches and leaves. Forget fire and scatter shots—these things are full of weaknesses, Canaan!”

“Yeah. If nothing else, this camouflage is useless here on the second northern front.”

And once they returned the records of this battle to be analyzed, that wouldn’t be true just for the second northern front’s battlefield, covered as it was in mist, fallen leaves, and mud. Right now, they had to rely on the movements of the air, the branches, leaves, mud, and sand, but with enough data, their systems would be able to detect the concealed Legion on their own.

They hid in the forest to cancel out the Federacy’s countermeasures against the optical camouflage, but the scrap monsters only gave them the hint they needed to come up with more countermeasures. That thought made Canaan smirk cruelly in the darkness of his cockpit.

“Analysis complete. Sending it over now!”

The temporary communications network set up for this operation employed multiple wired communicators and relay devices, which now sent the image Marcel had analyzed over to Shin. It was the estimated movement range of the metallic water spider walking along the buildings sunk in the dam.

The next moment, the Spearhead squadron split into three groups and moved at once.

“All right, then, let’s go!”

Having stayed under the dam with the 1st Platoon, two units from the 5th Platoon under Anju’s command aimed their missile launchers upward and opened fire. After soaring over the dam’s peak, the anti-light-armor missiles went into a nosedive and blew up over the riverbed, unleashing countless pellets. In one fell swoop, this took care of the self-propelled mines the Aranea was trying to throw at them.

The black smoke from the explosion formed a smoke screen, which Shin’s Undertaker used to lunge forward. He was heading past the towering, several-dozen-meters-high concrete wall of the dam, behind which hid the Aranea.

If they couldn’t bombard it from the front, and their ability to shoot at it from the flanks was limited, too, then their only option was to either cut it down with melee armaments or close in on it and shoot it from point-blank range.

The flames cleared, and the Aranea’s multiple optical sensors focused on Undertaker, the lone unit reckless enough to charge at it directly. But then tank shells flew in, focusing on each of the blue lenses that peeked over the arch, like they were trying to obstruct its field of vision.

The timed fuses triggered, making the shells self-destruct on the spot. The fragments and shock waves of the blast gouged into the lenses, and where they didn’t, the flames blinded it. Under the cover of the anti-armor missiles’ smoke screen, three of the 1st Platoon’s units fired HEAT shells ahead of Undertaker to cover its forward sprint.

At that point, Undertaker was right below the arch’s dam. At this range, the self-propelled mines couldn’t reach him, but he was still within the range of where the main crane’s hook and multipurpose arm could possibly sweep at him. The sub-beams, loaded with self-propelled mines, just barely skimmed over the water as the Aranea tilted its main crane forward, with its hook still dangling, so as to intercept Undertaker. The rotary mechanism spun, and then it swung the hook to the side.

At that very moment—

“You actually lowered it, idiot! Fire!”

The jibs of the Aranea’s sub-beams, shaped like skeletal wings, were low enough to brush the water. The tank shells and debris fell straight into the sea, so there was no risk of hitting anything but the Aranea. The soldiers aimed carefully, using this rare chance to hit the Aranea without needing to worry about the Fisara counterattacking them. Tohru’s 3rd Platoon and Claude’s 4th Platoon had followed the Brísingamen squadron after they finished sweeping the northern bank of the reservoir and opened fire.

To keep the large main crane from tipping over, the rear sub-beams had counterweights attached to them. The Aranea, which relied on these weights for balance, appeared over the top of the dam and leaned deeply forward to sweep and thrust at Undertaker. As it did this, it had to bend the sub-beams back as far as they would go, tilting them toward the water to maintain its balance. During this time, it couldn’t throw any self-propelled mines, and it exposed its sub-beams to attack from the enemy units on both sides of the reservoir.

A combination of 88 mm tank shells and 40 mm autocannon rounds unleashed concentrated fire on the unarmored scaffolding, tearing into it. The joints at the middle and the jibs on both sides came loose. The self-propelled mines thrashed, grabbing onto the sub-beams in an attempt to keep themselves from falling into the reservoir’s water. As lightweight as they were, the self-propelled mines were still made of metal. If they sank into the water, they wouldn’t be able to float up.

With both counterweights balancing it gone, the Aranea had to stop its attack for fear of tipping over and falling. It rebalanced its posture, moving back along its underwater footing to prepare to strike when Undertaker jumped over to the top of the dam.

It was using as its footing the sunken village’s buildings, which the Strike Package had already analyzed.

Two platoons continued their bombardment. The shells plunged into the water, diagonally hitting the spots the Aranea’s legs were trying to move toward as well as the surrounding area.

When the shells penetrated the water, they lost speed and their trajectories went awry, failing to destroy the legs, which were deep inside the reservoir. However, there were optical sensors set at the base of each of the Aranea’s pairs of legs. These sensors were meant to cover the heavy machinery’s blind spot, and having them targeted forced the Aranea to stop in its tracks.

“It stopped, Shin! Hit it hard!”

“Yeah, I just reached the top.”

Undertaker raced up the slope of the curved concrete gravity dam, which supported the water pressure with nothing but its own weight, and finally reached the top. The Aranea swung its hook to sweep at him. Shin made it seem like he was about to lunge forward, but then he faked it out by retreating and launching his anchor to the top of the dam, dangling through the air to dodge the giant hook. Having avoided the several-tonne blow, Undertaker leaped forward for real.

High above him, antiaircraft fire was mowing down the clouds of Eintagsfliege. Below him, the armored infantry used their weapons to undo the optical camouflage and hunt down the Löwe.

Seeing this made Shin come to another realization.

The Federacy having chosen democracy meant the civilians were masters of their own fates. The soldiers’ conduct was proof enough of that. These soldiers didn’t raise their voices in complaint, demanding to know why they weren’t being protected. The Federacy army had no need for heroes who swaggered and swore to protect anyone other than themselves.

Having reached the peak of its swing, the hook momentarily stopped and was then launched back the way it came. The metallic hook, weighing several tonnes, sped up and changed its angle thanks to the Aranea’s revolving mechanism, and tried to bash Undertaker.

But before that could happen—

“—Trying to move after you stopped makes you slow down, and that makes you easy to aim at.”

After pretending like it was hiding in the reservoir’s bank with the 2nd Platoon, Gunslinger climbed up to the southern slope and fired from there. The shot cut through the hook’s wire, which came loose and was carried off in a random direction by its own momentum; it crashed with a thud and kicked up a cloud of dust. Undertaker passed beneath the torn wire.

Assuming Shin was about to latch on to it, the Aranea tried to retreat farther backward, even if it meant damaging its optical sensors. It raised one of its rear legs out of the water, but once the joint revealed itself, Kurena instantly changed targets and sniped it, too. With one of the legs supporting its weight gone, the Aranea fell over with a heavy splash. Its attempt to scramble away made it come to a complete standstill.

Shooting an anchor into the dam to maintain its jumping speed, Undertaker clung to the main crane. The Aranea tried to thrust its hydraulic pliers from both directions at him, hoping to take him down even if it meant damaging itself, but it was too late.

The Aranea wasn’t meant to be a combat unit, and therefore, it was extremely slow. Its every movement was as sluggish as a self-propelled mine, and its reaction speed was even worse. Recovering his anchor, Undertaker jumped off the crane, only for the hydraulic plier to penetrate the crane and stop moving. Using this self-attack as a diversion, the Aranea swung its sub-beams forward, well aware that it would damage its foundation, and purged its sub-beams along with the self-propelled mines still clinging to them.

“—Tch. I figured it would do that…”

Having lain in wait in case the Aranea unleashed some kind of hidden weapon, Raiden’s 2nd Platoon opened fire, gunning down all the self-propelled mines. However, they used their dual 40 mm heavy machine guns so as to not damage Undertaker, which was thinly armored. Lightweight heavy-machine-gun rounds wouldn’t be able to shoot through the heavy scaffolding materials, however; they, like Shin, assumed the Aranea had something else in store.

Undertaker flipped in midair and triggered its four pile drivers at the same time. The purged piles blew into the air, and the explosion propelled Undertaker downward with intense force.

The projectiles flew through the air in vain, naturally incapable of tracking any target, and Undertaker’s unexpected action was too fast for the Aranea’s optical sensors to follow with its slow reaction speeds. Flipping midfall again, Shin landed on the back of the Aranea and switched his armament selection. He set it to the 88 mm smoothbore gun and selected APFSDS ammunition.

The nondescript screaming of someone already dead thundered in his ears. It was the voice of a human, but its lamentation lacked any personality or will of its own. It was one of the Legion troops that had their memories destroyed, a Sheepdog. It came as no surprise, but the Legion weren’t going to make a backline engineer unit into a Shepherd.

Its control core was right in front of Shin. Underneath a simple, unarmored panel. Shin pulled the trigger. As the APFSDS, a shell capable of silencing even a Löwe, penetrated its control core, the voice of that unfamiliar ghost died away.

While clearly disgruntled by the battle raging so close to it, the Fisara did seem aware that it had wandered into the fighters’ territory, and didn’t attack anyone. Still feeling ill at ease under its three-eyed gaze, Shin retreated along the collapsed main crane and moved over to the dam’s head. Water spilled loudly from the shattered dam gate—apparently, the Aranea and the Fisara crossing over it had ended up breaking it. Once he had gotten far enough away from the Fisara, he felt his unease calm down. Soon after, the Nordlicht squadron finished sweeping up the Löwe on its side, followed by the Brísingamen squadron. As they joined up, the two captains started complaining.

“What the hell, Li’l Reaper? I thought huntin’ the spider was our job!”

“I get we had our hands full fighting, but come on, Captain. You should give your elders a chance to shine sometimes, too.”

They both booed at him, but Shin gave them further orders. He felt bad about stealing their kill, as it were, but if they had this much energy to spare…

“There’re still self-propelled mines on the bridge, so go sweep them up. But be careful not to provoke a counterattack from the Fisara.”

He meant the leftover self-propelled mines the Aranea didn’t throw at them. Continuing to complain, the two squadrons moved to either side of the cable-stayed bridge. They aimed their shots so as to not hit each other and waited for a time when the Fisara swam away from the bridge to open fire, and then they swiftly retreated. Thankfully, the Fisara submerged underwater warily, and by the time it bobbed its head back out and looked around, both the Brísingamen and Nordlicht squadrons had retreated into the trees.

“Whoa, that was close… That thing’s seriously scary.”

“It’s in the way, so I wish it would pick up its kid and leave already.”

When they confirmed it wouldn’t counterattack, they once again came out of the trees to gun the self-propelled mines down. As they repeated this, the Fisara seemed to grow annoyed with them and swam away for a time, allowing them to shoot undisturbed.

“There we go… All done, Li’l Reaper.”

“Roger that—target area seized. Engineer unit, come on out. We’ll shift to securing the perimeter.”

“Yeah, leave it to us! It’s not often you get a chance to see a dam get bombed, so I hope you have your cameras ready.”

After the engineer captain replied in an oddly chipper manner, he and his engineer unit hurried over to the catwalk and went to work on the dam. They confirmed the number of explosives and the spots where they needed to be placed based on the dam’s existing schematics, and apparently, there was no need to make any modifications—implying the schematics were either accurate or that they’d simply redone the measurements while the fighting was taking place.

That said, they did need the Fisara to get out of the reservoir before setting the charges off.

“Captain Ishmael, you said the Fisara would leave once it finds the youngling, right?”

“It should. It seems to be heading in the direction of the distress roar, but…,” Ishmael replied, with the sound of people walking through a thicket in the background.

But suddenly, Kurena, who was waiting at a higher altitude, spoke up.

“Shin, Captain, I found it. Seven hundred meters east of the dam, in a pond near point 980.”

Gunslinger sent its optical-sensor footage via data link, which popped up in a holo-window. In a clearing in the autumn treetops, a snow-white mermaid swam through a pond dyed red.

“…The leviathan youngling is an aquatic creature, so it should have passed through the Kadunan floodway or the new Tataswa floodway. What is it doing in the middle of nowhere like that?”

“The maps say that there’s a river branch to the east of the Kadunan floodway. It probably built up to form this lake. Since it’s a small stream, the youngling was able to swim through it, but the Fisara either couldn’t pass it or didn’t notice it was there, so that’s probably how they missed each other.”

Since Ishmael wasn’t wearing an armored exoskeleton, he couldn’t see the footage, but an accompanying communications soldier showed it to him via communication terminal. Shin felt him nod over the Para-RAID.

“It’s a Leuca youngling. A leviathan breed with a biological sonobuoy. At this size, if it lets out its supersonic waves, it’ll just be really loud. It shouldn’t be dangerous on its own, so no need to be as cautious.”

“Let us know if you make contact with the youngling. About the Fisara…”

Shin was about to ask how they were going to spur it to move, but he then seemed to realize something and fell silent, letting Ishmael carry on.

“The Leuca’s bound to cry out again at some point. Either that, or the Leuca will notice someone came to pick it up and head this way. If possible, could you get the Fisara to approach the dam a little?”

“That would be fastest. Once the engineers are done, we’ll have the armored division pull out of the area. It looks like it wants to come here, so if we leave, it should get closer…”

Or rather, he’d been feeling the Fisara’s three-eyed glare on him for a while now, basically telling them to hurry up and get out of the damn way already. It was frankly unnerving.

Watching the Reginleifs fight monstrously large Legion and felling them quickly made Mele shudder at their strength.

He finally realized what he hated so much about them. They weren’t like him. They were just like the self-important nobles and the superior officers. They were the kind that made fun of him. The kind that could do anything but would do nothing for people like him.

“They—”

The Fisara seemed to want to return to the Kadunan floodway via the dam’s gate, but with the Reginleifs running around, it couldn’t come any closer and was growing visibly more annoyed. Its enormous figure circled just by the reservoir’s coast, kicking up water at the Reginleifs, likely as some form of threat. When a large amount of water splashed over Bandersnatch’s feet, it retreated. Seeing this, Shin said:

“Kurena, get down from there, just in case. No need to watch over the youngling anymore.”

“R-roger,” Kurena replied, her voice a little high-pitched.

Since Gunslinger stood out, as it was stationed in a high spot, it seemed to have given the Fisara the idea that she was the commander of the group, based on the way it was glaring at her. With how annoyed it was, it looked like it might fire a warning shot at any second.

Gunslinger got off its sniping spot and joined the 2nd Platoon, which had just finished fighting the armored units, as they were meant to help secure the area around the floodway.

Suiu resonated directly with the other three operations commanders.

“All units—the 4th Armored Division has finished eliminating the enemy heavy-armored units. Since we know their supply route, we’ll destroy it with additional bombardment, after which we’ll retreat.”

Siri followed up with her own report.

“2nd Armored Division, we’ve finished seizing all the dams. The only thing left is to detonate them.”

“3rd Armored Division, likewise…and then—”

As he spoke, Canaan turned the focus of his optical sensor in a certain direction. The waters of the Kadunan floodway cascaded down a steep slope, forming the Hiyano River below. At the end of that dam stood a gray building—a rustic-looking pillbox called the Kadunan artillery observation site. And inside it…

“We discovered a group of Federacy soldiers and civilians we believe were left behind. We’ll go in to retrieve them now.”

Canaan felt Shin’s eyes widen in surprise over the Resonance—even the stone-faced Reaper was shocked by that report.

“Civilians? Wait, you mean they’re survivors from the Fleet Countries?”

“Probably.”

There were twenty children there, the eldest aged ten, and an old man presumed to be a teacher. Some of the older children were pulling the younger ones, who clearly weren’t their siblings, by the hand. Since they were all kids evacuating together, the older ones likely felt responsible for the little ones.

They looked at the Reginleifs with round eyes, likely seeing them for the first time. One of the soldiers walked over to Catoblepas, staggering a little on his feet. He scrutinized the Reginleif with suspicious eyes and reached for his wireless device.

“I’m only checking to be doubly safe, but you’re Federacy military units, right?”

“Yes. First Lieutenant Canaan Nyuud, of the Eighty-Sixth Strike Package.”

“M-my apologies, First Lieutenant, sir!” The soldier immediately straightened his back. “I just, hmm, didn’t recognize your unit…”

“Were you a group that failed to escape during the second large-scale offensive?”

He must have been, if he didn’t know about the dam-destruction operation—the reason the Reginleifs were dispatched here.

“You mean the scrap monster bombardment and the attack that followed? Yes. We got an order to retreat, but our unit failed to get away, so we had no choice but to hide here in this pillbox… Those children are refugees from the Fleet Countries. Apparently, they got separated from the main evacuation group. The Legion all went south after the bombing ended, so they came here when the situation settled down.”

“…You did a good thing, protecting them.”

They must have had food or emergency reserves stored in the artillery observation site. A company of two hundred soldiers had to remain shut in there and wait for help they didn’t know would come. As such, it was surprising they’d shared food with young children who couldn’t fight.

Especially children unrelated to them, refugees from another country. They’d been isolated and separated from their group—no one would fault them for abandoning them in those conditions. It would have been seen as unavoidable.

The soldier gritted his teeth ever so slightly. It was a gesture that showed the thought had crossed his mind, though he regretted having even considered it.

“…Our late company commander told us to protect them.”

They had hesitated, but their commander had wiped away that hesitation.

“He told us how to barricade ourselves. Told us how to fight and gave detailed instructions on how to do it. He knew that if anyone got hurt, they probably wouldn’t make it. No, it’s because he knew that, that we wouldn’t be able to get away on our own, that he told us to barricade ourselves.”

Having lost the noncommissioned officer who commanded them and even their company commander, a group of rank-and-file soldiers were given all the tools they needed to survive. And on top of that…

“He said help will definitely come, so we mustn’t give up. That we have to keep faith until the very end. That we shouldn’t think of anything but saving those kids… He said, ‘You are proud Federacy soldiers. To these kids, you’re heroes. You can become the heroes who saved them.’”

They could save themselves. This pillbox that kept them safe. Those weak, helpless children whom they were bound by duty to protect. Their own weak hearts, so close to yielding.

And their pride.

“The company commander might be dead…but even in death, he protected us.”

At that point, the soldier’s emotions burst like a dam. A soldier, a grown adult despite his youth, wept openly. He wiped his smudged cheeks with his fist over and over.

“Thank goodness… Thank goodness we didn’t give up. You came. Help really did come. The commander was right. Thank goodness we didn’t betray him… Thank goodness we…we had faith…”

Faith in their company commander. Faith that the Federacy military would come for them. Faith in the good of humanity, in the belief that there was virtue in this world. In their conscience—which spurred them, despite how weak they were, to still believe in others, to still wish to protect others.

“…”

“This taught me that even people like us can protect someone—can save someone. That even former rooster serfs like us can do some good, can do something truly special.”

As Canaan looked on, overcome with keen emotion, the soldier flashed a tearful smile, his face screwed up in a sob.

“Thank God…”

Tohru heard the soldier’s confession over the Para-RAID.

“—Oh, come on.”

And hearing it made him feel like a weight was lifted from his shoulders. Come on.

“We can do it after all, can’t we?”

Even us, the Eighty-Six, and the people on the other fronts, in other units. The operation they were charged with went well, and the soldiers from the other units hadn’t given up, either. They were still working hard, coming up with plans—so they could keep on fighting, so they could protect themselves and others, so they could win. And their efforts bore fruit.

Federacy soldiers who were also waiting for rescue were able to save those children, who had failed to flee to safety. They were able to find that bothersome leviathan youngling without anyone dying in the process.

They really could do something.

The emptiness clinging to him since the night of the second large-scale offensive, when stars fell from the heavens, had cast a dark curtain in front of his eyes that blurred his path forward—but it was gone now. It felt like he was finally able to let out a breath he’d been holding in for so long.

“See, I told you, Tohru. I didn’t just say it out of sympathy.”

“You’re right, Claude. Sorry. We…”

I, my comrades, the Federacy army…

They may have had things stolen from them. They may have lost once. But even so, little by little, one by one—they could take back what was theirs.

“…we’re not powerless.”

The flame burned bright in Tohru’s gold-tinted green eyes.

The Para-RAID linked people’s consciousness, transmitting the same degree of emotions one would feel while talking with someone face-to-face. So when Shin contacted Frederica, who was in the command post, via the Para-RAID, he couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the curious air she was letting off.

“What’s wrong, Frederica?”

“Shinei. Could you, hmm, get a bit closer, perhaps? To the Leuca.”

Frederica was apparently inside Gadyuka, peering at the footage shared in its sub-window. Shin could hear Vika’s voice from behind her, saying things like “Rosenfort, watch it if you have to, but get off my lap. Don’t sit there.”

Picturing the scene in her mind, Anju choked, trying to restrain her laughter, while Marcel and the other control officers all let out dry coughs, likewise trying to hold back their mirth.

Shin then said, with utmost seriousness, a line that punctured all their efforts like a needle into a balloon.

“That’s quite a big daughter to have at your age, Daddy.”

Marcel and the others did a spit take, and Anju laughed out loud.

“Who do you think you’re calling a father, Nouzen…?” Vika growled. “Zashya, wait, why the notebook? Why are you sketching? Stop it. Don’t ignore me, I know you can hear me. Stop it, stop drawing!”

Zashya had started her own little rebellion, it seemed.

“Send the sketch over when you’re done, Major Zashya,” Raiden said.

“Like I said, please call me Roshya, First Lieutenant Shuga…but of course. I’ll send it over to everyone in the Strike Package.”

“Stop that, Ya—” Vika was about to shout Zashya’s long full name, but then—

“Cap’n!”

—Rito cut into their talk.

“Cap’n, I want to see the leviathan! Keep some gun-camera footage of it, please!”

Grethe responded, but as she did, Frederica squealed over the Resonance. Grethe had apparently pulled the girl out of Gadyuka by the collar and rescued the prince.

“You lot. And you too, the prince’s control assistant. I don’t mind you having fun, but not in the middle of a mission. Leave it for later.”

“Sorry.”

“My apologies…”

“I’m sorry.”

“Wait, I have to apologize, too?!”

The combat-engineer captain reported back, informing that they were finishing setting the explosives.

“Roger. Once the other dams are prepared, we’ll enter the retreat phase.” Shin nodded and listened carefully to the movements of the remaining Legion.

The Legion around the Kadunan floodway had all been eliminated, and there was no sign of any reinforcements coming. The group facing the main force at the Roginia line also seemed to be pausing their offensive and retreating back into the territories. With their main offensive force, the heavy-armored units, eliminated, they deemed it impossible to break through the front line.

The 4th Armored Division, having finished their sweep of the enemy, began to pull back and retreat, and all the 1st Armored Division’s dams had their explosive charges set and ready. The soldiers and children discovered near the Recannac dam were placed into empty Scavenger containers and sent back along the retreat route, and the 2nd and 3rd Armored Divisions were progressing steadily in their preparations.

Having confirmed all this, Shin addressed the last unit remaining, charged with one task that had to be completed before their primary objective of blowing up the dam could be achieved—recovering the nuclear fuel.

“Lieutenant Colonel Mialona, what’s the status on the Lady Bluebird Regiment’s mission?”

Lieutenant Colonel Niam Mialona replied quietly from her metallic mount, the Vánagandr. There, she sat upon the gunner seat, which also doubled as the tank captain’s seat.

“It’s going swimmingly.”